


there's strings attached to every single lover

by thischarmingand (electricchicken)



Category: Tanis (Podcast)
Genre: Blowjobs, M/M, Nicoblivious Silver, brojobs, canon-typical discussion of suicide, canon-typical problem drinking, handjobs, look just a lot of sex okay?, mediocre journalism ethics, surprise Black Tapes, the Tanis Blowjob Conspiracy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-31
Updated: 2016-12-06
Packaged: 2018-07-11 07:38:05
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 26,436
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7038496
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/electricchicken/pseuds/thischarmingand
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An incomplete list of things Nic Silver's not great at: journalism ethics, darts and reading the signals from the guy with the dead brother who is definitely trying for something more than friends with benefits. </p><p>title from The Hold Steady's <i>Banging Camp</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Six Hours

**Author's Note:**

> "so after talking to SD tonight I am pretty convinced I need to write a midseason Tanis fic where Nic keeps putting off getting beer with Jeff because he’s still kind of dealing with having made out with and maybe gotten a BJ from Jeff in the bar bathroom during that six-hour Guinness drinking sesh."
> 
> [me, on Tumblr](http://thischarmingand.tumblr.com/post/141419554813/so-after-talking-to-sd-tonight-i-am-pretty#notes), two months ago. 
> 
> this is that fic. spoilers through at least season one. all actual Tanis dialogue courtesy of the indispensable [Tanis transcripts](http://tanistranscripts.weebly.com/).

_“I ended up sitting in that bar talking with Geoff Van Sant for six hours. After a lot of conversation and quite a bit of Guinness, he decided I wasn’t a threat, and he agreed to let us visit his home in Everett, Washington where he’d spent the last 12 years living with his brother.”_

_…_

So, Nic might have gotten more drunk than he meant to, is the thing.

It started out tactical, mostly, ignoring the part where Geoff Van Sant had barely asked his opinion before buying the first round. The guy’s cagey, clearly sizing him up, pushing Nic’s voice recorder back across the the table every time he tries to take it out of his bag to get some of the particulars of Karl’s Craigslist ad on the record. But Nic can see his shoulders start to creep down halfway through their first pint, Guinness starting to work its magic.

He’s not gonna stoop so low as getting a source drunk to get information, but easing the tension, that’s not unethical. And buying the second round gets them back on equal footing — and in the clear of PNWS’s policy on accepting gifts from interview subjects.

Two drinks, that’s fine. That’s not even close to his limit.

He makes his plan of attack at the bar. Talk up PNWS’s past record for another half pint, maybe mention that award they’d won a few years back for the doc series on cross-border marijuana smugglers. Geoff seems like the kind of guy who might be impressed by that one technically-not-totally-illegal chopper ride he’d secured above a couple acres of grow op on government land up in B.C. Then he’ll go for the recorder again, get a little pre-interview on tape.

Simple.

The problem is Geoff, who takes a swig off his fresh glass and asks, “So how’d you get interested in all this shit anyway?”

And Nic’s got a line for that, too. Mysteries you can’t IMDB your way out of. A sense of wonder. After the time it took him to get Paul and Terry to fund the show, his patter’s down pat.

He’s prepared, but the thing is, he’s not really expecting Geoff to listen — to tip forward in his seat, one arm on the table, eyes on his face like he really and truly gives a shit. “Yeah, okay, but if it’s a mystery no one’s heard of, how’d you even find out about it?”

Nic should know he’s fucked by the time he’s got his laptop out, so he can look at his notes, read Geoff the few paragraphs of the Jack Parsons story that rattled around his brain for months before his proposal got the okay. Should know for sure when Geoff flags down a waitress to ask about the bar’s Thursday night wing special and order round four.

They’re on beer six and Geoff’s blatantly lying about El Chupacabra sightings near the place he did basic training over a pile of bones and leftover hot sauce when Nic skips past knowing he’s fucked entirely and says, “Hey, this might be weird to put out there, but I’ve got a joint in my bag.”

The alley behind the bar’s not that secluded from the street, but they hug close to the dumpster for cover. Nic leans against the back wall and pretends he doesn’t need to and Geoff hangs close, body providing a final, flimsy screen from anyone who might walk out the employee exit.

“Is this how you do all your interviews?”

“No,” Nic starts, and nearly chokes on a mouthful of smoke. Geoff steals the joint with speed he probably couldn’t have followed even five beers back. “Trust me, this is not — we’re off the record now, definitely.”

“Just checking, man,” his cheeks hollow as he takes a drag, sharpening the edges of his cheekbones.

He’s a good looking guy. Nic’s not blind, he notices stuff like that, even if he’s not going to pull an Alex and start describing people as sexy James Bonds. Warm brown eyes with a few more lines than normal around the edges, a crooked smile for a resting expression, black hair he might’ve run his hands through that morning and never touched since. He’s got that look — like a guy you’d ask to help you build your Ikea furniture, or play on your kickball team, or get high with in an alley four hours after meeting.

Maybe not sexy James Bond, but good in his own skin. Attractive, for sure. Nic’s not sure where he should be looking right now, but this is starting to feel like the wrong place.

Their fingers brush when the joint comes back his way, and Nic’s drunk but he’s also pretty damn certain Geoff was a standing a few inches further back when he lit up.

“This isn’t me trying to get anything out of you,” Nic says again, because ethics. And journalism. “If you don’t want to be on the podcast I’m not — that would suck — but I’m not gonna be a dick.”

“I got it,” Geoff says, and there’s no actual need for him to sidle closer to take the joint back, to give him that smile that’s all teeth and heat. “Off the record.”

“Off the record,” Nic repeats and licks his lips and oh fuck he’s going to the special journalist hell. The reporters in _House of Cards_ hell.

“You wanna finish it off?” Geoff’s holding the joint out again. Nic shakes his head. “Feel like another round?”

“In a minute, yeah.” He’s never been as good at gauging intent with men as with women. There’s still a chance he has this wrong. Stepping forward, until he’s half an inch from bumping Geoff’s chest with his own could go a couple of ways.

Geoff giving him a knowing smile, flicking away the butt and tilting in to kiss the corner of his mouth just happens to be the best of them.

Nic’s shoulder connects with the dumpster before his back hits the wall again, and the clang startles a laugh out of both of them. Geoff’s is still rumbling in his throat when Nic pulls him in by the front of his shirt.

“You think anyone heard that?”

“Maybe,” Geoff’s mouth finds his neck and Nic’s hands find his ass, that good, full body, stoned kind of arousal already settling in. “Might want to make this quick.”

“Yeah, do you want me to—” he doesn’t get much further because Geoff’s dropping to his knees and reaching for Nic’s fly and, “Okay, yeah, that’s good too.”

He’s not that hard yet, but it doesn’t take much with Geoff grinning up at him like that when he pulls him free of his underwear, wrist working in quick, efficient jerks, and the bar’s back door still right there and perfectly visible over the top of the dumpster if he turns his head to the left. Geoff’s free hand pushes under his shirt, nails dragging along his stomach and the rush of air out of Nic’s lungs feels just as loud as bone off metal.

The next breath, as Geoff licks up the underside of his dick, isn’t much better. Nic clenches his teeth together and tries to funnel air through his nose and can’t look away, even to check the door, when Geoff’s mouth sinks onto his cock. He can feel his pulse pounding in his ears and between his legs, has to flatten his palms against the walls find some purchase to keep him upright.

Heat’s coiling in his stomach, but his limbs feel fuzzy and far off. Geoff’s making soft, wet smacking sounds around his cock and Nic tilts his face up to the sky, trying to find some air, to do his best to choke off the noise building in his throat with the stretch of muscle. His fingers slip against the concrete, legs trying to fold and Geoff pulls off him with an audible pop. “Yeah, fuck, man. Come on.” 

He glances towards the door and the concrete’s cold against his cheek. Geoff’s jacking him, head ducked down to lick at the base of his dick. “Come on,” he says again, into Nic’s skin and he squeezes his eyes shut, bites down another noise and follows directions.

Geoff’s tucking him back into his pants when the door hits the dumpster with a slam and a blur of music and shouting spills out around them as someone hefts at least three garbage bags into the night. Nic manages about three seconds of acute panic before he’s being hauled around the corner of the building by his arm, too fast for his sloppy reflexes to comprehend. He goes sideways into Geoff’s chest before hands catch his hips, propping him upright.

“Easy, buddy.”

“That was—” Nic starts, and breaks off laughing. “Did you learn that in the military too?”

Geoff claps him on the shoulder, grinning like — well, like that just happened. “Tell you about it over another beer?”

Nic wakes up the next morning with the mother of all hangovers and GPS directions to an unfamiliar house in Everett saved to his phone.

…

Turns out, hooking up with a guy you still need to interview about his dead, conspiracy-obsessed older brother isn’t the sort of thing you can just find advice for on [Poynter](http://www.poynter.org). Nic considers asking Alexjust long enough to recognize that for the fully terrible idea it is.

But Geoff is… chill. Or maybe it’s just that talking about a recent family suicide puts a damper on anything else. God, Nic should’ve caught that in their pre-interview, even if getting the reveal in Geoff’s kitchen makes for good tape. The other night is not going down as a proud career moment.

Today’s better. Sure, there’s a beer bottle open in front of him again, but at least the recorder’s on.

“You said Karl was in the Navy and you were in the army — were you guys a military family?”

“Yeah,” Geoff’s more clipped with the tape running, unless that’s just sobriety. “Dad was army too. Met my mom when he was stationed in Okinawa after Vietnam, ended up bringing her back here when he got redeployed. Far as I know Karl would’ve gone army too it the navy hadn’t headhunted him out of high school.”

“Headhunted?”

Geoff shrugs. “Guess they wanted all that techie shit he did.”

“That’s not your style?”

“I’m more run and gun. Grunt stuff.” He smiles, but there’s a remove there. “Beer doing okay? Need another?”

“It’s fine. Long drive back, you know?”

“Right, yeah.”

Nic’s not good at silence. Journalist thing, maybe. Fear of dead air. When Geoff leans back in his chair and doesn’t say anything else, it ought to feel like a challenge. Ask another question. Drag out something for the story. It shouldn’t be this — whats the word? Companionable.

He leans across the table to pause the recorder and Geoff catches his eye and smiles. “You ever want to do this again some time, let me know.”

…

_"Hey Geoff, it’s Nic."_

_"Hey, buddy. What’s up?”_

_"Oh, you know, just working on a few new angles.”_

_"Oh yeah? How’s it going?”_

_"Well, that’s why I’m calling.”_

_"Yeah?”_

_"Yeah. I think it might be time to grab that beer.”_

…

When he hangs up with Geoff, Alex is looking up from her petrograph photos with a puzzled expression. “Weren’t you avoiding that guy?”

“Avoiding? What? No one’s avoiding anyone,” Nic says, and hopes it doesn’t come out too fast, and the heat he can feel rushing to his cheeks isn’t bringing any colour with it. He grabs a sheaf of papers, any papers, makes a show of rifling through them, like there’s something he desperately needs in — Craigslist printouts and show notes for episode two. Sure, why not. “Putting together a new podcast, remember? I have no life right now.”

“Nic, I’ve listened to you talk to him. That’s not your I’m busy voice, it’s your _I’m busy_ voice.”

“Okay, one, I don’t have a voice that uses finger quotes,” Nic says and Alex makes a move like she’s going to throw a pen at him. Nic starts putting the papers into a stack, thumps the bottoms against the edge of the desk to straighten them. Thumps it three more times, when the first thump just knocks half of them out of alignment. “Two, I’m really just busy I wouldn’t even have had time to get together with him if weren’t talking about _Tanis_ , that doesn’t mean I don’t want to.”

“Right,” Alex says, and gives him an odd look.

“Geoff’s a good dude. We’re going to hang out again.”

“Okay. That’s… great?”

“Glad to have your support,” Nic says, and this time she does lob the pen.

…

Nic has friends who are sources. Hell, the half of his Seattle social circle that isn’t made up of other reporters, co-workers, or the girl who takes his orders at the Stumptown by the studios probably falls into that category. And he’s managed to put MK up in his apartment without incident, beyond a judgemental survey of his Netflix queue and record collection, and a lingering worry she might have bugged the place while he slept.

Getting a beer with Geoff Van Sant is not inherently out of line.

The dart hits the board about three inches right of centre and Geoff whoops and slings an arm around Nic’s shoulders. “Nice one.”

Not inherently out of line, Nic tells himself again, and reaches for his beer without shaking him off. A deep swig and warmth blooms in his stomach. “What’s that make the score?”

“No idea,” Geoff says, slipping away to start lining up his next throw. “Why? You wanna play for something?”

He doesn’t bullseye, but it’s a hell of a better shot than Nic’s. “The next round?”

“Oh, it’s fucking on,” Geoff holds a hand out, gives Nic a shake that nearly crushes his knuckles. “Nice knowing you.”

“Wait, where do you think you’re throwing those darts now?”

Geoff just waggles his eyebrows and rolls a dart between his fingers and downs the rest of his pint in a single, oversized swallow. “Just so you know, you’re buying shots.”

What follows isn’t the most decisive ass kicking of Nic’s life (Words With Friends with Amalia, July 2013), but it’s thorough.

What sucks most for his ego is how hard it is to be mad about it, because when Geoff steps back up to the board it’s like he’s dropped something, all that bro-y, backslapping, joking shit just fading away. Where Nic’s never seen him anything but relaxed there’s — not tension, but this sort of coiled energy now. Shoulder’s back, head up, eyes all focus. Nic’s U.S. Armed Forces knowledge is mediocre at best, but he can put together an image, picture the fatigues and the gun and Geoff’s skin windburnt and deep gold in the desert sun.

He’s not great — a couple shots go wide enough of the board to add new pinholes to the bar wall — but Nic can’t seem to look away.

 _Not inherently out of line_ was a shitty mantra to begin with.

“Shots,” Geoff says with almost the same inflection he’d used for _darts_ an hour earlier, once they’ve totalled up the points.

“What do you drink?”

“Tequila,” Geoff says, just as bright, and Nic feels like he should’ve called that. “Two tequilas!”

“We said loser buys one round.”

“Yeah, and it’s your turn next round too.” Geoff slings an arm around him again, nudges Nic towards the bar with his body. “Come on, time to pay up.”

The liquor burns in his throat and stomach. When Nic crowds him into a bathroom stall maybe ten minutes later, he’d swear he can still taste salt on Geoff’s mouth. He’s got his hands buried in Nic’s hair, holding his head in place while they kiss, angle of it just enough to make him dizzy as he feels for Geoff’s zipper.

“Fuck yeah,” Geoff murmurs against his lips when Nic gets a hand down his underwear, palms his cock. When Nic shoves his pants down, gets his hand properly around his dick Geoff’s breath huffs out hot against his skin. “ _Fuck_ , yeah. C’mere, let me—”

They go stumbling around the small space, but Geoff manages to get him free of his briefs. Nic goes in for a kiss, misses, drags his lips across his cheek instead until Geoff grabs for his hair again and guides him in. This close his ears are filled up with the rough sound of breathing and kissing and skin on skin, moving out of sync. They bump knuckles, and Geoff’s fingers fist in his hair, and Nic bites down on his lip and feels him shudder with it.

When he comes, Geoff rolls his hips up hard and grunts into his mouth and — and, fuck, Nic’s glad he wore a flannel he can button over this tee shirt because he didn’t think this through. Geoff’s chin slumps to his shoulder, but his hand’s still moving on Nic’s cock, fast and rhythmless. A few seconds to come back to himself and his mouth finds Nic’s neck. Teeth on skin, maybe hard enough to bruise and it’s all Nic needs to arch and come with a curse he doesn’t muffle well enough into the arm he throws over his mouth.

Geoff comes up for breath with glazed eyes and one last nip of Nic’s jaw. His lips are kiss swollen and his shirt’s sitting askew on his shoulders, v-neck bunched against his neck on one side and showing off collarbone on the other. And Nic’s pretty sure he’s going to kiss him one more time, for the road or something, when Geoff glances down and laughs.

“You’re gonna wanna try to wash that out, man.”

If there’s some trick to getting cum stains out of cotton, Nic hasn’t learned it. The best he can manage is a wet spot across his abdomen, and even still there’s something suspiciously shiny about the whole thing. Nic sighs and resigns himself to buttoning up his overshirt.

“So, is this the part where you make me chase you around for another month?” Geoff’s leaned against the wall by the paper towel dispenser, body language as casual as if he’d asked Nic the time.

“I — what?” Nic tries a laugh and it’s embarrassingly bad. “I, no, I wasn’t avoiding you.”

Geoff folds his arms across his chest, very slightly raises his eyebrows.

“I, look, I’m not,” he gives up on the buttons, rubs at his face with a still-damp hand. “This is new for me.”

It’s the first time Nic can recall seeing genuine surprise on his features. “With a guy?”

“With someone who’s part of the story,” Nic clarifies. “You’re supposed to disclose any — any connections that might affect how you report things.”

Geoff looks intrigued. “You think your podcast listeners care that I gave you BJ?”

“Maybe not in that much detail.” He’d gotten enough emails after MK’s sleepover. Nic doesn’t even want to imagine. “But the fact that we’ve, uh, hooked up, I guess it could be seen as clouding my objectivity about you.”

“Still sounds voyeuristic as shit to me.”

“That’s… kind of the job.”

“At least you admit it,” Geoff says, face going thoughtful. “Tell them we’re friends, then. That’s a connection.”

“I guess—” Nic thinks about it. Geoff’s a good dude. Fun to drink with. Easy to talk to. It doesn’t feel wrong. “Yeah, that makes sense.”

“Problem solved,” he kicks himself off the wall, comes over to do up the buttons Nic still hasn’t managed. “If you’re not going AWOL again, I know a place in Everett that makes a pretty great burger. Next time you’re up my way, give me a call?”

“Sure, yeah.” It’s Nic’s turn to give him a clap on the shoulder.

Friends. He kind of likes the sound of that.


	2. Break and Enter

_“You found something?”_

_“Yes.”_

_“What is it?”_

_“I’ll have to show you.”_

In the time it’s taken to have his latest cryptic conversation with Cameron Ellis, Nic’s lost track of Geoff. The duplex isn’t much bigger than his apartment in Seattle, but he watched the guy commit a Class B felony maybe 20 minutes ago. For all Nic knows, the crime spree might have continued to the unit next door.

“Hey Geoff, buddy?

“In here.”

He finds Geoff downstairs, in what might have been a bedroom, before the Cult of Tanis moved shop, hands and face up against a patch of wall painted a greyish shade of beige, squinting at something. “You okay over there?”

“I think they repainted.”

“Uh, alright?”

“No holes in the walls,” he gives the drywall a tap for emphasis before backing away. “From hanging pictures and shit. Most people don’t bother to repair those. Ask me how I know.”

“Did you have to kick out more renters? I thought the new guy was gonna be fine.”

“Nah, Lee’s great. Super quiet. I was thinking of—“

Nic has a flash of Geoff’s basement suite, the first and only time he’d seen it. Chunks torn out of the drywall, wires hanging. Right, stupid. He’s going to blame that on the looming question of Cameron Ellis, and the bit where they’re still breaking the law. “Why were you looking at the walls anyway?”

“Wanted to see if there were any signs left of the Cult of Tanis sex dungeon,” Geoff grins at him, just as amused as he’d been when they first walked in. 

“I don’t think—“ Nic can feel himself going red in the face. “It didn’t seem like that kind of orgy.”

“You’re the expert.” He leads Nic back into the hallway, where another series of doors open into more empty rooms, and back up the stairs. “I don’t think you’re going to find out much either way. Whole place is clean.”

“I’ve got to head back to the city anyway.” At least the Cult of Tanis left the blinds behind. Nic peeks out one of the duplex’s front windows, scanning for any signs of life as he puts his shoes on. No neighbours and no police, yet.

“That fast?” Geoff opens the front door, clearly less concerned with the possibility of having to call Nic’s producers to come bail them out of jail. Then again, it’s not like either Terry or Paul have _his_ mom’s number in their phones.

“Put the key back,” Nic reminds him. “Cameron Ellis wants to meet. He’s the—“

“TeslaNova, I know. Listen to the show, remember?”

“Right.” He’s going to get used to that, one of these days. Friend and fan is somehow turning out to be a weirder pairing than friend and source. “He wants to show me something.”

“He say what it was?”

“I thought you said you were listening to the show.”

“More Yoda bullshit, hey?” Geoff’s taking his time setting the key just-so under the mat. Nic’s starting to get the feeling he’s fucking with him.

“Mostly,” he unlocks the car and gets in, Geoff finally following a few beats later. “It might have something to do with your brother’s tapes.”

“More co-ordinates?”

“Your guess is as good as mine at this point.”

Geoff’s quiet a moment, as Nic guides the car into the street. “I could come with you,if you still want some back up.”

“I think I’ll be fine.” He gets another block before it occurs to him Geoff might have other reasons for asking. “If it is about Karl, I can tell you this weekend? We could grab those burgers.”

“You gotta come back up here again?”Geoff’s watching him sideways.

“No, but we keep saying we’re going to hang out,” Nic points out. “I need to spend a few hours in the studio Saturday, but I’ve got a free weekend otherwise, unless someone springs another camping trip on me.”

Now Geoff’s really giving him a look. “What the fuck has your week been, man?”

“Trust me, you have no idea.”

…

Even before _Tanis_ and the _Black Tapes_ , Nic likes to think he’d seen some shit. But watching Geoff Van Sant unhinge his jaw to eat a triple-decker burger nearly the size of his own head is its own thing entirely.

“How are you doing that?”

Geoff waggles his eyebrows, mouth working around a heroic bite of meat and cheese. “Practice. Dude, don’t tell me you’re one of those knife and fork people.”

“More like a reasonably-sized meal person,” Nic says, taking a pointed bite out of his own single-layer burger. Geoff was right, this place is good. Really good, for Everett of all places. “Oh man.”

“Right?” Geoff puffs up a little, pleased.

The second bite might be even better. “Okay, this was worth the drive.”

“Can’t believe you came back here twice in one week,” Geoff says, shaking his head. “We could’ve done something in the city.”

“You came down for the show,” Nic shrugs. “And besides, you’ve been talking up these burgers.”

“And I delivered.”

“Yeah, you did.” He’s been waiting for a moment to transition the conversation. It’s not great, but it’s not the worst. “Hey, speaking of the show, I wanted to ask you about something you said earlier.”

Geoff makes a ‘go ahead’ motion with a french fry.

“The other day you mentioned your aunt had a friend who was part of Heaven’s Gate.”

“Oh that shit,” Geoff says, like an early-Internet savvy cult’s no big deal. “Probably not connected to your stuff. She lives in San Fransisco. I don’t think her friend ever came up here to visit.”

Nic tries not to show his disappointment. At least he hadn’t spent too much time firing off an email to whoever’s still running the cult’s 90’s-vintage website. “How’d they meet?”

“I dunno, probably one of those hippie bookstores or something?” He leans across the table, snags an onion ring off Nic’s plate with a look of feigned innocence. “She was into some pretty woo woo stuff when I was kid. Lots of crystals and incense and I Ching — she used to drive my mom crazy with that one. Guess she figured she must have some mystical Asian powers or some shit.”

“Rough,” Nic says, not sure what else to add to that. “Your aunt never joined, though?”

“Nah. She’s out there, but not matching unitards and Kool-Aid out there.” He pushes his plate forward on the table, offers Nic a fry. “Can’t solve all your mysteries for you, man.”

“That’d be too easy, right?”

“You’d hate it anyway,” Geoff says, which isn’t untrue, but now he’s giving Nic a version of that look he’d seen in the car the other day. “You didn’t come all the way up here just to ask about that, did you?”

“No,” Nic says, for sure too quickly this time. “No, seriously, I didn’t. It’s just really hard for me to switch off from this thing, you know?”

“I’m getting that,”he takes another physics-bending bite, chews thoughtfully. “How about you tell me something else about yourself? Not a _Tanis_ thing.”

“Uh, I don’t know,” he takes Geoff up on that fry to stall for time. Some day, someone’s going have to explain to non-reporters how to narrow down a question. “I’ve… got a dog?”

“There we go,” Geoff grins. “Where’s your dog, man? You should’ve brought him.”

“I don’t know if that would’ve gone down so well with this place,” Nic points out.

“Next time bring the dog,” Geoff says, decisive. “So, what kind? What’s his name? How old? Paint me a picture here.”

They do pet stories for a while (or, in Geoff’s case, accidental class-fish killing stories),compare TV recommendations, end up arguing about the last season of _Lost_ for longer than Nic would’ve guessed he still had in him (it’s _not_ hypocritical to want narrative resolution to a mystery on a TV show, thanks). When the waiter drops the cheque, Nic doesn’t feel like that much time should possibly have passed.

“On me,” Geoff says, and waves him off when Nic starts to protest. “You’re spending on gas, don’t sweat.”

“Next time you’re in the city, then, okay?”

Geoff grins over the billfold. “You’re taking me somewhere expensive.”

“Oh — okay.” It’s not even a subtle joke, he should’ve started laughing sooner. Leaving’s thrown him off balance, somehow. The feeling follows him out the door into the parking lot. It’ll be a long drive back in, must be it.

They’d come in separate cars. Nic fiddles with his keys, leans against the door instead of unlocking it. “Thanks for inviting me out, seriously. It’s kinda nice to get away from everything for a while.”

“Any time. I still want to meet this dog of yours. I’m holding you to that, buddy.”

“Right, yeah. I think we can make that happen.” There’s a soft thunk as Nic’s car re-locks itself. “She’d probably like you. I mean, she likes pretty much everyone who’ll rub her belly.”

“Got it.” Geoff’s not showing any signs of getting into his car either. Instead, he cocks his head at Nic. “Hey, do you want to come over and grab a beer before you hit the road?”

…

He’s been to Geoff’s house, gone through what was technically Geoff’s stuff. The living room’s a new experience, though. Nic sits at the end of the couch and tries not to snoop too obviously.

Not that there’s much to see: a TV on the wall and some other electronics underneath mostly hidden by the shadows of an entertainment centre, a coffee table with nothing on it except a stack of coasters, a couple of plants by the window, not much art. The whole place seems aggressively tidy. Or maybe that’s just compared to his own nest of books and papers and computer cords tangled in knots on the floor.

“Pale ale work for you?” Geoff comes into the room carrying two bottles loosely in one hand, opener in the other.

“That’s fine.”

He takes the centre of the couch, not the opposite end, sitting almost sideways once he’s cracked the beers and shoved one over, an arm draped across the back. Five, ten more inches Nic’s way, and he’d be able to brush his shoulder.

The jitteriness from the end of dinner still hasn’t left. Nic picks at the label on his beer with a thumbnail, takes a swig too fast and has to put his lips over the end of the bottle when it starts to foam up. “Shit.”

Geoff cracks up, clinks the end of his own bottle against Nic’s when it’s finally safe to pull back. “Nice.”

Nic swipes the arm of his shirt across his mouth and pulls a mock scowl. The second sip goes down smoother, no incident. Geoff’s stopped outright laughing at him, but there’s still this light in his eyes, like he could start again any time. Nic feels something in his chest start to ease, just a bit.

“You should tell me something about yourself this time. Something that’s not — just, whatever you feel like. No _Tanis_ stuff.”

Geoff nods, eyes flickering up to the ceiling, like he has to think about it too. “Not weird family shit, hey? Wow.”

“I mean, weird family shit if you want,” Nic agrees. “But whatever. Like, uh, I don’t even really know what you do for fun, outside of beer and—“

“Protecting you from sex cults?”

“So, not living that down any time soon,” Nic sighs.

“Nope,” Geoff grins, reaches across those few inches of space to nudge his shoulder. “I hike a lot, watch too much TV. Pretty normal stuff.”

“Not a lot of breaking and entering?” Nic asks, because he’s not the only person here who deserves a hard time here.

“Normal levels of breaking and entering,” Geoff says.

“Normal for you being—?”

“Couple, maybe three times a year.” It’s surprisingly hard to tell Geoff’s fucking-with-you grin from his poker face, Nic realizes.

“Is that a lifelong hobby, or more of a recent thing?”

In lieu of answering, Geoff takes a long sip of beer and bounces his eyebrows a couple of times.

One beer turns into two all too easily.

“—so Alex gets right up in his face — and again, she’s wasted, maybe 5’3, in heels, and this guy’s just about three of me across — shoves her press ID in his face and snarls, literally snarls, ‘ _we’re press, we have a right to be here_.’ Which, again, not true, but—”

“The short ones’ll fuck you up,” Geoff nods.

“Exactly. So, he lets us though the kitchen and, yeah, that’s the most expensive wedding I’ll ever crash. And the last student journalism conference we ever got invited to.”

“You’ve got to introduce me to her at some point,” Geoff says.

Nic tries to picture it and has an unnervingly clear mental image of the two of them, dressed head to toe in black, picking the lock on Richard Strand’s office door. The gross violation of ethics would almost be worth it to watch the look on Strand’s face. “Yeah, maybe somewhere low-alcohol the first time.”

“If you say so,” Geoff grins, like he might somehow be able to see what Nic’s picturing, before getting to his feet. “You want another?”

Nic glances down at his bottle, where there’s maybe an inch of liquid still visible. That seems fast. “I shouldn’t.”

“Drive back, right.”

“Right.” He gets up, but dawdles in front of the couch instead of heading for the door. There’s something strangely disappointing, still, about the prospect of going. Maybe it’s that Geoff talks in straight lines instead of figure eights and mostly doesn’t answer his questions with more questions. It’s a nice change, to talk to someone and have it come easy. “Hey. This was really good.”

“Damn right it was,” Geoff says. “Like I keep saying, any time you want to do it again…”

“For sure,” Nic agrees. Geoff’s smile is infectious. It’s impossible not to grin back. He has this weird feeling, too, like he ought to touch him somehow. A slap on the back or shoulder. Something.

Geoff beats him to it, clapping a hand to the side of his neck. His thumb drags down Nic’s throat, making him swallow, and Geoff’s smile goes a little slanted, a little amused, before he tugs him forward and kisses him.

It occurs to Nic they haven’t really kissed like this before. Not even the mostly sober part, but at this pace, just a slow press of lips to match the sweep of Geoff’s other hand down his back. It takes too long to figure out what to do with his own arms, but Nic’s going to blame that on surprise, and the heat that wicks through him, under the surface of his skin. He starts to pull back and Nic’s not ready for that, reels him back in by the shoulders and coaxes his mouth open with his tongue. Geoff inhales hard, fingers clenching in his shirt, but he lets Nic take the lead, keep kissing him with that same slow heat they’d started with.

When they do break for air he tilts his forehead against Nic’s, smile gone liquid, eyelids at half mast. And it’s kind of astonishing, how complete and total the urge to _wreck_ him is, right now.

“Thought you were going,” Geoff says, as though he’s not the one who’s just made a play for him to stay.

“I just remembered,” Nic blurts. “I still owe you.”

Geoff looks blank for a second, before the words register. “Oh, dude, if this is still about the bill it’s not—”

“No.” He runs his palms down Geoff’s chest, curls his fingers in the waist of his jeans. “I was thinking, uh — do you have a bedroom around here?”

With their faces this close, Nic thinks he can pinpoint the exact moment that hits him.“You want the tour?”

The room’s as neat as the rest of the house. Nic, who last made his bed some time around the seventh grade, wonders if he could actually bounce a quarter off Geoff’s smoothed-out sheets and bedspread and settles for trying with the man himself. He goes down laughing, easy and, yeah, with a little hint of a bounce, legs still dangling off the sides.

When Nic bends over him Geoff curls a hand around his neck, arches up to press their mouths together. He’s still laughing into the kiss, distracted enough that Nic can feel the full-body jolt that goes through him when he starts undoing his jeans. When he hooks his fingers in Geoff’s waistband again he lifts his hips unasked, lets Nic shove his pants and underwear to his knees.

“Nic,” it’s murmured against his lips, already breathless. Nic kisses him again, before he breaks away, dropping to his knees.

“That night at the bar when you…” he runs his hand up the inside of Geoff’s thigh, has to swallow down the wanting in his throat when even that little bit of pressure is enough to spread his legs wide as his half-on jeans will allow. “I was thinking, I never really returned the favour.”

He looks up just in time to see Geoff’s head, craned up to watch him, hit the mattress with a thump. “Do what — whatever you want to do, man.”

It’s been a while. Since that APR internship the year after J-school for any kind of real frequency. But Nic thinks he remembers how this goes. Geoff’s already pretty hard when he takes him in hand, runs his tongue over the head of his dick, getting himself used to the taste. He takes the first inch or so into his mouth, still testing the feel of it, learning the shape, and Geoff’s breath rattles out of his throat.

Under his palm, Nic can feel his muscles twitch and tense. He presses down on his hip, not enough to really hold Geoff to the bed, but hopefully enough direction to keep him there as he slides his mouth down as far as he can manage and hollows his cheeks.

From above him there’s a soft groan, and Nic feels fingers push through his hair.

“Nic,” Geoff says, again. Not wrecked yet, but it’s close, and Nic closes his eyes and works his way through another rush of want with lips and tongue and his fingers pressing dents into skin. He can feel the rise and fall every time Geoff takes another belly breath in, can taste salt in his throat. Once he’s used to it, the weight of his cock on his tongue, the strain it puts on his jaw, they’re hot in their own right. Nic pushes a palm against the front of his jeans, and it’s not enough with a layer of denim in the way but he still groans around Geoff’s cock.

“Fuck,” and _that’s_ the voice he was looking for. Geoff’s up on an elbow, mouth open, eyes more black than brown. He pushes his fingers through Nic’s hair again, catches a handful and holds but doesn’t pull. “I want to fuck you so bad right now.”

It’s like being punched in the stomach, if you could punch with lust. Nic squeezes his eyes shut, has to get his bearings before he pulls off with one last drag of his lips. “I — yeah, that sounds — okay, yeah.”

Geoff’s already pulling his shirt over his head and kicking out of his jeans. And Nic’s fully aware he just had his mouth around his dick, but it’s still weird, somehow, seeing him naked. He scoots back on the mattress, offers Nic a hand. “Coming up?”

He pulls harder than Nic’s expecting, sends him toppling forward, one luckily-placed knee on the mattress away from a serious buzzkill. No sign Geoff’s noticed that, unless unzipping Nic at lightening speed counts. He gets a hand down the back of Nic’s jeans, under his briefs and uses a handful of ass to haul him up until they’re flush, Geoff grinning at him bright-eyed.

“Clothes off.”

He’s not much help with that. Keeps kissing Nic’s neck and shoulders, running his hands over his back and sides or kneading at his ass when fine motor control might come in handy. His jeans are still dangling from one ankle when Geoff rolls them sideways, pressing him down against the bed, one thigh between Nic’s legs.

“How do you want it?” Geoff asks when he comes up for air, some time later.

Been a while for this too, though not as long. Nic’s had enough game girlfriends over the years. “On my hands and knees, is that — work for you?”

“Any fucking way you want,” Geoff says, and gives Nic’s hip a little slap. “Up you go.”

He’s shakier than he’d thought he’d be. Too close to the edge already. In his peripheral vision he can see Geoff moving at the side of the bed, opening a drawer in the nightstand. He tosses something over his shoulder, and the condom packet hits the bedspread near Nic’s braced hands. No bounce.

“You good?” Geoff asks.

“Yeah. Uh, hey, maybe go easy at first. It’s been kind of a long time.”

“We can swap around if you want,” Geoff says. “That easier?”

That’s an image. _Fuck_ , that’s an image. But Nic’s had time to think about the first plan, get committed to it. “I’m good.”

“ _Yeah_ , you are,” Geoff drapes himself across his back, teeth tugging at an earlobe, dick pressed against his ass. Nic shivers.

He’s careful about getting him ready in a way Nic isn’t surprised by, exactly, but somehow wouldn’t have expected an hour earlier. A lot of lube, and check ins, and kisses pressed to the small of his back. More laughter, too, than he’d have predicted — first time he pushes his fingers in just right, makes Nic swear and grind against him, Geoff laughs like someone’s told him a joke that just happens to contain a key to the mysteries of the universe.

“Pass me the condom?”

The muscles in his arms tremble when he reaches back, and it’s a stupid little thing, but Geoff squeezes his hand before he takes it.

He settles across Nic’s back again a few long, absent moments later. “You ready?”

Nic lets out a strangled laugh. “So ready, trust me.”

“S’what I like to hear.” Geoff leans forward, kisses his cheek. “Spread your knees some more.”

Nic’s arms keep him upright as Geoff guides his cock in and through the first few long, slow thrusts that push the air out of his throat in soft whines. He can feel Geoff’s breath hot against his neck, a scrape of teeth against his shoulder.

“Fuck, you feel good,” Geoff murmurs, and between the drag of his cock and the slur in his words Nic feels dizzy, has to slump forward, head against the mattress to try and ground himself. Geoff’s mouth finds the back of his neck, bites, and Nic grinds back into him with a moan.

Geoff’s hips stutter then snap forward and Nic’s arms give out. Doesn’t do anything bad for the angle, damn, nothing bad at all.

Another rumble of a laugh behind him. “Liked that?”

Nic groans, “How can you tell?”

In lieu of a comeback, Geoff’s hands find his hips, pull him back onto his cock. Nic turns his face into the sheets to muffle a cry and wraps a hand around his dick, little bit of pressure and friction enough to make him shudder.

He’s close, leaking onto his fingers, pressure building in his gut, when Geoff leans down again, loops an arm around his chest and pulls him back onto his knees, back flush with his chest. Stronger than he’d looked, even after Nic had clocked the muscles in his arms during their darts game. Geoff’s mouth mostly finds his as his hips keep rolling up, and Nic’s thoughts turn to static, scatter as he comes. 

He’s still dead air, floating, when Geoff’s fingers dig into his shoulder and he goes still pressed against Nic’s back.

When they finally roll apart and fall back against the bed, Nic gets this strange urge to start laughing again.

…

“Would it be weird if I had a work question for you right now?”

From the bedroom doorway, Geoff tosses him a wet washcloth. Still naked, and Nic can’t help but look him up and down.

“You weren’t kidding when you said you don’t switch off,” Geoff says. “What is it?”

Right, Nic had asked a question. But first, more pressing matters. “What’s that tattoo?”

Geoff rotates his arm, gives him a better view of the ink on his bicep. Two crossed swords, it looks like, lines fuzzy and blue black from age. “A few buddies and I got them before we shipped out for the first time. Your listeners interested in that now?”

“What? Oh, no, I was just curious.” He swipes the cloth across his stomach and thighs absently, can see Geoff’s eyes track the movement. “Okay, thinking about this a little more, it might be weird.”

“Nice try dude,” Geoff says. “You committed to this. What’re you asking me?”

This had seemed like a much better idea a few minutes ago, when Geoff was in another room throwing out the condom. “What did Karl look like?”

Geoff looks deeply confused. Nic winces.

“I don’t know, I was thinking about how we’ve talked about your family a bunch of times, and I don’t know what anyone looks like but you. Do you have a — a picture or something?”

“Damn, man,” Geoff lets out a long, slow breath, comes back to sit on the edge of the bed. “I’m not sure.”

“If this is about the show, I don’t want to put it on our website or anything like that—”

“Nic, I trust you,” Geoff says, cutting him off. “I mean I really don’t know. His ex sent something over for the obituary and I tossed the stuff I couldn't sell.”

“You don’t have any of your own?” Nic kind of wishes he’d put on underwear again before they started this conversation. Interviewing is harder naked. “Family photos or something? It doesn’t have to be recent.”

“He was 11 years older,” Geoff says. “He got sent to Russia when I was still in middle school. There’s, like, a decade where we never saw each other. Not a lot of chances for pictures.”

“But he lived here for 12 years,” Nic says. They’ve had high school job shadows at PNWS he’s got pictures of. He’s got a picture of his dog groomer, somewhere, although that was mostly to show off the bandana she’d tied around Diane’s neck.

Geoff scuffs at the back of his neck, won’t meet his eyes. “I didn’t go down there. He didn’t come up much, except to hand me a stack of rent cheques every six or seven months. We weren’t — it never felt like we were family. I just had a renter in the basement who kinda looked like me and was fucking nuts.”

“Wow,” Nic says, and wishes he hadn’t as Geoff’s cheeks flush red. “I — fuck, I’m sorry. Forget I asked, okay? It’s none of my business.”

“You know what you never asked me on the show?” There’s a weird note in Geoff’s voice now. “How’d I know he was dead, if I never went into the basement.”

That’s… actually a good question. Nic isn’t sure how to feel, that part of him wants the answer.

“So, it started to smell,” Geoff says. “I figured it was some of that shit he kept in the basement. The guy was pretty obviously a hoarder, right? I hardly ever saw him take out garbage. And yeah — no. It was Karl.”

“Jesus.” It’d probably be weird to give him a hug right now, given everything. Nic sets a hand against his back instead. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t worry,” Geoff must be able to see his face out of the corner of his eye, because he says it again, more emphatic. “Seriously man, I’m not — look at me, how busted up about this do I seem?”

The red in his face is faded, same half smile back in place. Tired eyes. _A little, kind of_ , Nic considers saying. “If you ever do want to talk, you can, you know? Off the record. Just, to me as a friend.”

“Right, pal,” Geoff snorts, and somehow it’s easier to breath again. “You haven’t even used that friend shit on the show yet.”

“I’m going to put it in,” Nic says.

“Uh huh, sure.”

“I’m waiting for a relevant moment.”

“I believe you,” Geoff says, obviously lying.

“I could lead with it next episode, if it makes you happy. ‘This week, an important update in the search for Tanis: I made a new friend.’”

“Can’t wait, buddy.”

…

Nic does try to get it in, really. He’s got about half of a disclosure announcement drafted up, slotted (so far uneasily) into their joint attempt to investigate The Cult of Tanis and/or get arrested for residential burglary. A few more passes, and he’ll get it in there without it sticking out like a sore thumb.

He’s almost managed a promising third draft in his head, when Sarah Grinko a.k.a. Melanie Nedved a.k.a. Veronika Pillman walks through the door of a used bookshop in Bellingham.

_“_ _Hey Alex, it's Nic. Looks like I'm going camping for a day or two, or three, if you can believe it. I'll keep you posted as long as there's cell service, I'll keep my phone on. I have a spare battery._

_“I dropped a pin and sent you a Google Map location, that's where we're parking. I'm going with Veronika Pillman, Morgan Miller, and Sam Reynolds. Okay, wish me luck. Bye!”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yes, that's another potential name for Nic's dog you might have noticed just casually slipped in there. and yes, I did up the chapter count but I promise the next one brings it home.


	3. Haze

_All four of us stepped out into the clearing. The familiar tall birch trees, the insects, everything was the same. We'd been in this clearing before, only now... there was no rocky wall or cave. Instead, behind us where the cave had been, was a small ten-by-ten hut._

They don’t give him his phone back right away. Person of interest, the officer whose name Nic can’t remember, no matter how long he stares at her badge during questioning, tells him. The phone’s evidence. Evidence of what, Nic’s pretty sure he asks, but if there’s an answer it slides away.

Alex buys him a burner from wherever’s still open that late and meets him at his place when Terry and Paul drop him off with orders not to show up at the studio for at least a week. Nic watches her send out mass texts from the other end of his couch and nods along when she reads off names from his laptop contacts list that don’t bring faces with them.

 _Hey guys it’s Nic. I’m at home and not hurt_ — he only half hears the rest of whatever it is she types out. It doesn’t mention the cabin, the three new missing persons cases, the hours (days?) Nic can’t remember. At least, he doesn’t think so. It’s probably too much for a text.

When she leaves it’s with a hug that nearly knocks him breathless and a punch to the chest that does.

“Don’t do that again, okay?”

Nic’s not sure what he tells her.

His parents offer to fly in. Nic’s not sure how he convinces them to stay put either. “I just want to sleep for a week,” he remembers saying, though he’s not sure to who. Must have been his mother. Alex wouldn’t have bought the lie.

Paul and Terry come back with takeout. The food tastes like ash in Nic’s mouth, and they won’t let him come in to work for at least a week. _Take some personal time_ , someone says. _Get some sleep, you look like shit_ , says someone else. Actually, that might have been Alex too.

He’d sort of like to, is the thing, if he couldn’t still feel something pulse and hum every time he starts to drift off. Nic spends the night starting at the ceiling, tries to concentrate on the feeling of his eyes drying out when he holds them open, the weight that seems to drag down on his body the longer he doesn’t move. Entropy’s not so different from sleep.

Alex stops in again on her way to work with coffee and bagels and the dog on her leash, and Nic finds out it’s day two, post-cabin. Diane sniffs and paws at Nic’s legs and calves but shies away from his hands. Alex gets one good look at him in full light and takes back the coffee she’s brought him.

She leaves again and Nic goes through three closets before he finds the final third of an old scented candle that smells like fabric softener and fake lemon and nothing like taffy.

He comes back to consciousness sprawled sideways on the couch to a pool of smouldering wax in a jar and the taste of iron in his mouth and the TV turned as loud as it’ll go, playing cooking shows. And something’s buzzing, under his back, wedged against his ribs.

The cell phone has two missed calls from a number he doesn’t recognize. So that rules out his parents’ house and his PNWS studio desk line, but leaves every other person, place or thing on the planet. Nic’s still staring, useless, at the string of digits, when the text notification flashes

_> It’s Geoff_

Nic rubs at his eyes, pushes his tongue against the roof of his mouth trying to chase away the taste there. The phone stays silent, motionless.

He mashes the call button, counts one ring, two—

“Nic?”

The name’s no better in Geoff’s mouth than it was in Alex’s. Feels like someone’s dragged claws the wrong way up his spine, against bone.

“You there?”

“Yeah, I’m — yeah.”

“What’s that sound? I can barely hear you.”

The TV, right. Nic pats around in the couch cushions for the remote and comes up empty.

“You want me to call you back later?”

“Hold on a second.” No sign of the remote anywhere and his head feels like it weighs a thousand pounds. Dragging himself off the couch sucks, completely. Crossing the room more so.

He hits the power button and the screen goes dark. He’d swear the noise echoes.

“Nic?” Geoff asks again, and it’s like grinding teeth.

“Hi, yeah. It’s me.”

“Shit, man,” Geoff says, whoosh of breath going tinny through the phone speaker. “It’s good to hear your voice. How you doing?”

That feels loaded. “Uh, could be worse, I guess. It’s been—”

Fuck, where to even start with that?

“Yeah,” Geoff says. Nic wonders how long he let that sentence dangle. “You want to tell me what happened?”

He couldn’t even explain why that gets a laugh out of him. “I don’t even think _I_ know what happened.”

“Right.” There’s a pause on the line. From the other side of the room, Nic can see Diane poke her head through the kitchen doorway, watching him. “Hey, you need anything?”

He thumps a hand against his thigh a couple times, beckons the dog over. She comes slow, wary at first, lingers just out of reach. “Like what?”

“I don’t know. Food? Company? A beer?”

Nic crouches down, extends a hand. Diane sidles a little closer, nostrils flaring again, ears perked.

“C’mon,” Nic mutters.

“What was that?”

“Nothing.” He lets his hand drop and she pads forward, circles, presses herself up against the side where he’s holding the phone and whines. “A beer sounds good, yeah.”

“You feel like — I could drop by after work? Unless you’re up for the bar?”

Nic tries to imagine going out and can’t. Total failure of thought. “I’ll text you my address.”

“I’ll be by around seven,” Geoff says. Nic mostly hears him, as he leans a little of his weight against Diane’s flank and tries patting the top of her head with his elbow. Her tail thumps against the back of his leg. He’ll call that a win.

…

Geoff shows up at the door to Nic’s apartment with a six pack tucked under his arm and a plastic sack dangling from his hand.

“Neighbour let me in,” he says to Nic’s unasked and, truthfully, unthought of question. “I picked up Chinese on the way — you didn’t say anything about food, but I figured who says no to dumplings, you know?”

“Right,” Nic says.

He looks the same as he had the last time they’d hung out. Same loose-limbed, easy posture, same boots, jeans, t-shirt uniform as usual, same bedhead. Nic doesn’t know what he’s checking for, any more. No one else looked different.

“So,” Geoff shifts his weight, gives him the edge of a smile. “You gonna let me inside?”

“Yeah,” Nic says, and reaches for him.

It isn’t —he hadn’t planned to do that. Nic can’t even really explain it, except he’s there and he’s the same and when Nic’s fingers clench in his shirt Geoff goes where he’s pulled and tips his head down for the kiss. His wraps his free arm around Nic’s back, tight, and it’s normal, it’s really fucking normal.

“I got you, buddy,” Geoff murmurs against his lips. “Take a breath.”

He sucks in a lungful of air and Geoff squeezes the back of his neck. Any second now, this is going to be embarrassing. They’re still — Nic hasn’t even let him out of the hallway. This is way over the top. Nic kisses him again.

Geoff must push them along, because otherwise Nic has no idea how they make it through the door and into the living room. It’s not until his legs hit the edge of the couch that Geoff pulls back, pretty much holding them upright on his own where Nic would happily sink down. “Let me get rid of this stuff first.”

The beer bottles rattle together as he sets the box on the floor, bag of food balanced on top. And Nic figures this is the part where they topple onto the couch, but Geoff curls both arms around him and gives him a hard, unexpected hug.

“I’m fine,” Nic says, because it feels like it needs saying.

“Okay, man.” He doesn’t sound convinced, but he lets Nic kiss him again, so whatever works.

Geoff ends up half in his lap, knees on either side of his hips, hands shoved under his shirt while Nic works his mouth down the line of his neck. He circles one of Nic’s nipples with a thumb, skims the backs of his knuckles down his stomach. And maybe it’s just the lack of sleep and dehydration, but Nic’s already shaky from just that little bit of touch. He should’ve — shit, he should’ve told Geoff to bring condoms.

“Hey,” Geoff says, and his voice is already distracted, rough, “who’s that?”

Nic’s blood stops in its veins.

There’s a rattle of shifting metal. Dog tags. _Dog tags_ , Jesus, right, the dog.

“Here girl,” Geoff’s saying, bending away and extending a hand for Diane to sniff. “Nope, nose out of the dumplings. C’mon.”

Nic lets his head drop back against the couch and tries to deep-breathe his heartbeat back to a subsonic speed. “Yeah. That’s Diane.”

“I got that,” he’s laughing, pulling away to scoop up the food, and Diane’s head pops into view for the first time as she tries to clamber onto the couch by Nic’s feet. “How about I put this in — uh, Nic?”

“Yeah?” So, _that’s_ about half a register above normal.

Geoff cups the side of his face, palm warm against his cheek, and watches him for the space of one normal heartbeat, or about four of Nic’s. “Where’s the kitchen?”

Somehow, it feels like they’re having a different conversation than this one. “On the left.”

“Okay,” he gives Nic’s cheek a little pat. “Be right back.”

Diane trails off after him, tail wagging and tongue out. Nic rubs at his face, tries some more breathing. It helps. Pounding of his heart’s down to a dribbled basketball, maybe.

The couch cushions dip, and Geoff takes one of his hands and presses a glass of water into it. He watches Nic drink with an expression too neutral to get anything out of. Doesn’t say anything until he’s drained the glass.

“Must have been some fucking camping trip.”

“Yeah,” Nic sighs, “it really fucking was.”

“You don’t have to tell me shit about what happened,” Geoff says. “And no one gets to tell you shit either about how you deal, far as I’m concerned.”

“That’s,” Nic’s not sure what to say, “fair?”

“So if you want me to take you back to your room and fuck, we’re good, no issue.” Geoff takes the glass from Nic’s limp fingers, sets it on the floor. “But, uh, you going to be cool with that tomorrow?”

Being honest, Nic’s still kind of hung up on the _fuck_ part of that. “Yeah— yeah.”

“Good. ‘Cause I’m selfish, man,” Geoff’s shoots him a wry smile, fingers curling around Nic’s knee and squeezing. “I still want you to be able to look me in the eye later.”

“You got it,” Nic says, and grabs him by the wrist to pull him to his feet. “You didn’t bring condoms, did you?”

Geoff half-laughs, half-groans. “I’m good, but I’m not a fucking mind reader.”

“Damn,” Nic crowds into his space anyway to find the spot on his neck he’d been fixing on earlier, the one that makes his breath hitch in his throat.

“Think we can work around that,” Geoff says, and the way his voice drops, Nic knows they can.

…

The disorientation takes a while to register.

Nic thinks it might be a good sign, kind of. At least he’s noticing it now when his mind starts to float away. Would have been nice if his consciousness hadn’t decided to shift left of his skull and three feet up on his first drive back to the PNWS studios after a weeklong exile, but he’d pulled the car over and put his head on the steering wheel for the length of a terrestrial radio commercial break and told Terry traffic sucked on the way in.

It’s better than if he’d found out on mic, anyway.

There’s not any kind of consistency to it, so far as he can tell. Sometimes he wakes up with it, watches himself shower and take Diane out and burn his tongue on his first cup of coffee. After hypnotherapy session number two it creeps in so slow and insidious that Nic goes almost an hour before he can put a name to the nagging feeling. Other times it’s smaller. A sandwich he won’t taste for lunch, a conversation with Alex that echoes even in the recording studio, a night lying on the couch until sunrise staring at websites he’s too far away to read.

So far there’s only one — set of activities, you could call it, where Nic’s mind seems to want to stay put.

Geoff’s fingers squeeze around his wrists as he rises to his knees before sinking back onto Nic’s cock. There’s sweat dripping down his forehead, plastering his hair flat and standing out in beads against his skin, and when Nic tilts his hips up into the motion Geoff’s head falls back, mouth open to the ceiling around a wordless noise of pleasure.

Nic can’t remember how long they’ve been doing this, but he’s pretty sure it used to be light outside.

There’s a pattern here — or — or maybe not a pattern, maybe something else, but Nic isn’t sure what to call it, when the thing he’s tracking _isn’t_ there. Whatever it is, Geoff’s been over twice this week and once the week before and Nic went up to his place the weekend before that and the haze comes and goes but hasn’t shown up once while they’re skin to skin.

Geoff grinds down again, movement sharper now, shorter. Another rock of his hips and both of them shake with it. His cock is flushed and leaking against his stomach, slick there mingling with the perspiration. Hard to say which one of them this was supposed to be teasing, when Geoff’s still pinning his wrists to the couch cushions as he rides him, bearing down when Nic tries to break free.

“Dude,” Nic manages a shaky laugh, “just let me touch you.”

“You gonna say please?” Geoff manages maybe two seconds of smirk before he’s dragging Nic’s hand to his dick, whole body curling down to crush their mouths together. He tastes like salt and his teeth catch on the edge of Nic’s lip, and when he comes apart he whispers Nic’s name like it’s filthy.

Another funny thing Nic’s discovered, post-mystery cabin: Geoff’s kind of a cuddler once he’s come. When he gets back from chucking the condom in the kitchen wastebasket (the one with the lid Diane can’t get open to stick her nose in), Geoff pats at the couch cushions until he sits, then slumps into his side, head on Nic’s shoulder.

“You okay there?”

“Yeah, man,” Geoff leans more of his weight into him, until Nic has to push back to avoid tipping sideways. “I’m good. Real good.”

“Good,” Nic gives him a pat on the arm. His skin’s still slick under his hand and his body’s warm against his side. Nic wonders if it’s within the limits of a casual hookup to ask him to stay like this for a while, as an experiment, to see if the effect of him holds. The Eld Fen intro for episode eleven still needs fine tuning. Some extra grounding couldn’t hurt. “You want a beer or anything?”

Geoff hums in what might be agreement. “Don’t need me to head out soon?”

“Not really.” He’s not due back in the studio until Monday. And it’s not like he’s going to sleep much tonight. “I’m just going to do some work.”

“I don’t want to get in your way,“ he lifts his head, leaving a cold patch in his wake.

“Stay.” It’s strange, to realize how much he wants it. “Later we could, uh—“

“Fuck, if you’re looking for round two I’m gonna take that beer,” Geoff says with a laugh, cheek touching down again.

Nic means to get up right away and head back to the fridge, but the couch is comfortable and Geoff’s still leaning on him pretty hard. Drinks can wait a minute.

…

The work goes well. Better than he expected, honestly. Somewhere in the midst of his second beer Diane crawls onto the remaining space on the couch and nudges her nose against his thigh. Nic spends the next hour or so typing one-handed, scratching her ears between drinks.

He’s not sure how long Geoff’s been asleep before he notices. It’s not like he’s been moving much, other than to drink or, once, point out a typo in Nic’s script. That had been back during beer number one, though, and when Nic starts to turn to ask if he’s interested in a third, Geoff’s head is heavy against his shoulder and his eyes are shut. His second drink’s maybe half full on the coffee table.

There’s something softer about him, like this. It’s weird, because Geoff never seems that tense, but his face is relaxed in a way Nic’s never seen before and can’t fully describe. Something in the eyes, maybe, the way all the little lines there seems to have smoothed out. He’s breathing slow and deep, tendrils of air rushing over Nic’s skin.

Diane pushes her nose against his knee again, small spot of cold and wet enough to push him back into the moment. His gives her another small scratch behind the ears and that seems to be enough to satisfy. The movement doesn’t look like it does anything to jar Geoff awake.

“Hey,” Nic says, under his breath. Diane’s ears perk. Geoff’s lashes move a little too, unless he’s imagining things.

“Hey,” Nic says, louder, and shrugs his shoulder just enough to push against his chin.

Geoff makes a low, indistinct noise, eyes still shut. Awake, though. Nic can see it, the way something’s shifted in his expression.

“You’ll mess up your back like that.” Nic reaches across his body and gives him a gentle shake. Geoff groans and half swats at him. “You want to sleep in my bed?”

When his lips move, Nic can feel it against his skin. “You coming?”

“Uh, I’ve still got some work to do.”

“What time is it?” Geoff asks.

Nic considers lying. “About 2:30.”

“Dude, seriously?”

He should’ve lied. Geoff probably couldn’t have read the time off the computer screen at this angle. “I don’t sleep much.”

“Yeah, because you don’t fucking go to bed,” Geoff pushes himself off Nic’s shoulder, stifling a yawn into his hand.

“I’m not really that tired,” Nic protests. And he’s not, it’s just yawning’s contagious, and he’s a couple beers in, and—

Geoff snorts. “I’m not going unless you go.”

“You realize,” Nic says, “that you’re the only one you’re hurting if I say no.”

“Uh huh,” Geoff stares at him, longer than is comfortable, eyebrows raised.

Nic sighs, and hits the keyboard command to save his notes one final time before shoving the laptop onto the table. “Fine, okay.”

“Canadians, man,” Geoff says, self-satisfied. “So easy to push around.”

“Yeah, well, when I get sick of lying in the dark wide awake, I’m coming back out here,” Nic says, ignoring an offered hand up. Diane scoots her way into the warm spot on the couch cushions the second he’s gone, tail wagging. Traitor. “Just so you know.”

“Whatever.” Geoff starts down the hall, leaving Nic to trail after him. Right, yeah, he would know the way to the bedroom. It’s half tempting to leave him to it and boot the computer back up. But Geoff would probably just come out and guilt-stare him some more.

He follows instead, crawling into the blank space on the mattress next to where Geoff’s already face down and pulling the sheets up after them.

The next time he opens his eyes, there’s watery light streaming through the blinds.

The room’s just light enough for him to make out shapes, but not much in the way of colours, like he’s inside some old black and white film. Can’t be more than three hours since he’d laid down, and some perverse part of him is satisfied to see the usual sleeping pattern holding.

He’d half expected Geoff to cuddle up to him at some point — to keep him from getting up, if nothing else. But he’s still on his half of the bed, stretched out on his side, one arm disappearing under the pillow and the breadth of his back turned towards Nic. Even in the half-dark, Nic can make out the lines of his shoulders and side before they disappear into the blankets pooled at his waist. He’s not snoring, but his breathing’s heavy enough to hear, a steady in and out, slow enough he can count the space between.

Nic can’t explain it, but his palms itch. Geoff’s maybe a foot away. It’d be nothing to touch him, brush his fingers across his back, feel the ridges of his spine and the muscles bunched just under the skin. And his body’s ahead of his head again, already reaching out while Nic’s still thinking it through, the rest of him far off and floating as he lays a palm flat against Geoff’s back.

He can feel it when they connect, though, warmth of him bleeding through Nic’s skin and up his arm and into a tight knot in his stomach. He doesn’t — feeling things is new, like this.

Geoff shifts, starts to move, and Nic’s breath stops in his throat as he snatches his hand back. But when he turns over his eyes are still shut and his breathing’s still deep and even. His mouth’s open, just slightly, and Nic’s got this stupid, idiot urge to run his fingers across his lower lip.

It’s like — like there’s this rope coming out of the centre of his chest, and Geoff’s at the other end, pulling it taut. And it hurts, almost, in his throat and in his ribs, to stay here with his hands at his sides when it’s still a matter of so little to move closer.

Up close, Geoff’s lashes are dark against his skin and the tattoo on his shoulder is a black smudge in the early dawn. A piece of his hair’s fallen forward into his eyes, and Nic doesn’t think, this time, before brushing it back.

Geoff’s eyes blink open, closed, open and his mouth eases into a small smile. His voice is raspy with deep sleep and Nic’s hand is still in his hair and the line between them is pulling from somewhere deep inside.

“Hey.”

“Hey,” Nic parrots, words thick in his throat, and he wants to — fuck, he does’t know. Kiss him, or burrow into him, or wrap them up together until there’s some slack, some give, and he can breathe properly again.

“C’mere,” Geoff says, like maybe he knows, and draws Nic the last couple inches in until they’re chest to chest.

And maybe he knows and maybe he doesn’t, but it doesn’t matter because his eyes slide shut and his arm goes heavy across Nic’s side and his breathing’s evened back out before there’s any time to react at all. Before Nic can do anything but lie there in the half light, staring at his sleeping face as his heart batters at the back of his throat.

…

It’s maybe 9 a.m. when Geoff wanders out of the bedroom, arms still raised in a stretch as he comes through the doorway that leads to the apartment’s main room. He’d tugged his boxers back on the night before, sometime while Nic was getting drinks, but they’re slung low on his hips now, deep grooves of his hipbones rising up.

Nic jerks his eyes back to his computer screen and opens a new tab, jabbing at the keys until a URL autocompletes.

“You get any sleep?” Geoff asks, amused.

It’s his email again, already opened two tabs down, but Nic clicks into his spam folder and pretends to be engrossed in an advertisement for widgets, or mail order brides, or something. “Little bit.”

“You’re welcome,” Geoff says, and drops onto the arm of the couch, nudging his knee against Nic’s side. “Hey, I’ve got to get going soon, but —sounded last night like you might wanna get back in bed for a while first?”

A series of images unspool in his head in rapid succession. Geoff flat against the mattress under him, lips parted for a kiss. Nic’s hands in his hair and against his skin. The look on his face just before he comes. The lazy curve of his smile afterwards, when they’re catching their breath. And there’s that rope pulled tight again, taking the air out of him as it goes.

“I should get some more work done, actually,” Nic says, and clicks at the screen until a fresh word document mercifully pops up, cursor blinking.


	4. Okay?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Couple quick things:
> 
> 1\. We're crossing the podcast streams! By which I mean, **spoilers for episodes 2x01 and 2x03 of The Black Tapes Podcast.**
> 
> 2\. Figuring out the timeline of the PNWS universe is the worst thing in the world and I recommend it to no one. From what I and a few stalwart fandom friends have been able to determine, Nic goes into the woods some time in October. Ish. This leaves a fic author all sorts of fun questions about what he was doing in the gap between then and the start of Tanis season 2 in spring of the next year. (Like, mixing audio, one assumes, but I feel like the case for _being a complete dimwit_ is pretty strong.)
> 
> 3\. I promise the next chapter is the last. I know I say that every time but there exists a strong outline, and I told Ancalime/Galacticdrift to murder me if I try to push it and longer. 
> 
> 4\. If you like what you're getting here, may I recommend [some Tumblr content to you](http://thischarmingand.tumblr.com/tagged/tanis)? Depending on your level of dirty-mindedness I can offer you a 90s High School AU and a bunch of D/s content.

_Now I know I’ve got to_  
_Run away, I’ve got to  
_ _Get away, you don’t really want any more from—_

“Nic?” Alex waves her hand maybe an inch from his nose, cutting off his view of a listener email from somewhere in Texas. Something about ghostly visitations in a vacant lot. Or maybe an alley. He’s been skimming.

“What?”

“Are you going to answer that?” Alex keeps waving her hand until he has to look away. He makes the mistake of glancing sideways at his phone instead, still blaring Soft Cell and a familiar name on the lock screen. He wishes he’d set a shorter ringer. They’re back to the chorus before it dies off and heads to voicemail.

When he looks up, Alex is watching him, eyes narrowed.

“I think I’ve got something here,” Nic lies, nodding at the screen.

That does the trick. She’s back in his personal space, but her eyes are focused on the text. “Let me see.”

It occurs to him, too late, he should’ve read the email to the end. Nic scrolls down and see the _X-Files_ joke and the line of alien-head emojis about two seconds before Alex does.

“Yeah, you’ve really got something here,” Alex says with a snicker, and pokes him on the shoulder.

It’s not even a hard poke. Nic jerks anyway, one elbow cracking off the edge of the desk with the force of it. Dissociation’s getting subtle again — crashing back into himself is the first sign he had of it this time. “Sorry.”

“Are you still,” Alex waves a hand by the side of her head. Nic thinks he remembers making a similar hand gesture at one point, during one of their recording sessions he’d taken in from the ceiling. It’s a better summary of everything than he’d realized.

“No,” true now, if not a minute ago. The way his arm’s still throbbing is enough to keep him tethered. “Just tired, I think.”

“Yeah, tell me about it.” She knocks a few papers aside until there’s enough space to sit on the edge of his desk and slump against the wall. Now that he’s here, Nic can see how pale she looks, the way her shoulders sink under some invisible weight, the coffee stain on the hem of her shirt that looks like it’s been there a while.

“Still not sleeping?” Before he’d — disappeared is probably the simplest way to put it — they’d been 3 a.m. texting pretty regularly. Mostly bitching about late night infomercials, some pics of Diane, maybe a little more Strand-related chatter than he’d needed after midnight. Nic tries to remember the last time she’s messaged him since then that wasn’t work related.

Alex shakes her head, and even that looks exhausting. “On and off. Still better than you, I bet.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“That you were reading the same email when I came by half an hour ago to ask if you wanted coffee.” She’s smiling, but not really. Nic feels something sink in his stomach and hopes it isn’t showing on his face.

“We’re getting coffee?”

“The magic of interns,” she looks like she’s going to stand up for a minute, then settles more of her weight against the wall, arms crossed over her chest. Nic’s steeling for questions, but she doesn’t say much else. Her eyes are hardly open. He doesn’t remember — it’s been more than a month since he got back. How long has he been missing this?

“You should put it in the show,” he suggests, “if you’re having trouble sleeping. Maybe talking about it would help?”

“Uh huh,” Alex says, and he’s not sure if she’s listening. He’ll put it on the list of edits anyway. They might need the extra padding, if their gamble that the announcement of new season of _Black Tapes_ is enough to convince Strand to make contract again doesn’t work.

He’s pulling up their shared outline docs when Alex yawns, says, “You should call that guy.”

“What guy?” Nic’s shoulders migrate up to his ears without his say so, but her eyes are closed now and his voice is pretty neutral. It probably sounds fine.

“Whoever called you,” Alex says.

And that’s the kind of timing that makes Nic wonder about the patterns of the universe, and whether someone’s bugged the office, because _Tainted Love_ explodes out of his speakers again.

CAMERON ELLIS, says the call display, for the third time today.

Nic sighs and hits accept.

Long story short: Cameron Ellis is building a wall. Or someone’s building a wall for him. ‘A coalition of government officials, scientists and corporate entities,’ Nic scribbles on a notepad, meaninglessly.

Nic nods through the latest job offer and keeps nodding through the roughly dozen times Ellis says “unlimited access,” and kicks himself 15 minutes in for not having hit record on his phone when he picked up.

An intern sets a coffee at his elbow and Nic realizes he’s missed the last few sentences. “Sorry, can you repeat that?”

“You should call me when you feel ready to continue your work,” Ellis says, instead. “I’ll be waiting, Nic.”

It’s been a while since his name felt that wrong in another person’s mouth. Nic’s starting to wonder if every first conversation he has with someone, post-breach, is going to feel that way. He’ll have to take note, when he and MK finally —

Assuming MK responds to any of his emails or Skype notifications any time soon.

Some time during the call Alex had turned his monitor her way, started scrolling through the reader emails with his wireless mouse propped on her knee and her coffee cup cradled against her chest. She’s near enough that if she swung her foot out she’d probably kick him in the side. It’s — good to be close like this, so casually. Nic couldn’t explain why it feels like there’s something stuck in his throat that the coffee won’t wash down.

The phone’s still unlocked. His thumb pulls his messaging app up against his will.

It’s only been five or six hours since it came in, but the text’s already buried under messages from his mom about coming home for the holidays and from Paul and Terry and the a few of the interns about work. He has to scroll to find it.

**GEOFF:** _Coming up this weekend?_

Nic clicks the phone to black.

…

Geoff puts some spin on the tennis ball as he lets it go, and Diane nearly somersaults backwards as she launches after it, kicking up a spray of dead grass and muck. Three days of steady late-November drizzle, and Magnuson Park’s off leash area is more mud pit than dog run. Nic’s not surprised they’re some of the only people out here today. He should’ve tried looking at the forecast before he’d made plans. He’d been banking on a full park.

At least Diane’s still a distraction. Geoff’s dropped to a crouch on one of the few grassy areas not churned up by doggy feet, trying to beckon her over. “C’mon girl, I’m not going to you. You want that ball thrown you gotta put in the effort.”

Diane drops the tennis ball onto the ground, straight into a shallow puddle, and wags her tail at him. Her coat’s already covered in streaks of mud. Nic’s going to have to hose her down at the car wash again when they’re done here.

“Hey,” Geoff calls over his shoulder, to where Nic’s still standing on the edge of the parking lot, leaning against the chain link fence. “I think she wants you to throw this one.”

“Uh, really?” Nic crosses his arms over his chest. He should’ve picked a warmer jacket. How Geoff’s managing in shirt sleeves is beyond him.

“Yeah, man,” Geoff leans out over the much as far as he can and still doesn’t make contact with either ball or dog. There’s a spatter of mud along one of his forearms, drying grey and starting to crack. “Look at that fucking face.”

Nic figures he’s about half following instructions. Geoff’s hair’s gone wild in the humidity, even as the rain’s trying to slick it down, and he’s shooting him this wry, open smile. So, maybe Nic’s planning skills don’t suck as much as he thought. That’s not the kind of smile you turn on someone when you notice the two of you haven’t said 10 words to each other in the last half hour.

Geoff pushes to his feet and Diane goes on alert, yipping and and circling closer, waiting for the next pitch. “Hey, don’t look at me, girl. I don’t have the ball.”

Maybe he is too easy to push around. Nic turns up the collar of his coat and picks his way out to Geoff’s patch of grass. It takes another two steps past him to get close enough to the tennis ball, but he’s stepped in worse. “Hey, Di, over here.”

He lobs it up, height over distance, and Diane skids around to follow its arc, kicking another spray of muddy water up as she goes and spattering the front of Nic’s jeans.

Behind him, Geoff starts laughing.

Nic’s heart clenches.

“Glad you two came in your own car,” Geoff says.

“I’ve got towels in the back.” The water’s starting to seep into his shoes. Nic backtracks onto the grass, until they’re shoulder to shoulder. Diane’s got the ball in her teeth already. If he concentrates on that, he can mostly tune out anything going on in his peripheral vision.

“Smart.” There’s some movement that might be a nod. Nic’s watching Diane splash her way back. “So the podcast’s kicking your ass right now?”

“Huh?” He holds a hand out and this time the dog trots right up to them, passing him the ball with a handful of spit and another drizzle of mud.

“You got stuck in the office all day yesterday, right? That’s rough on a Saturday.”

“Right, yeah. It’s not — there’s just a lot of stuff to get in place for _The Black Tapes_.” He’s nearly through the listener emails now. So far, not much of use, but it killed enough hours yesterday. By the time he’d gone home Nic’s eyes had been sore enough from the screen he wouldn’t have wanted to try and keep plans if he’d made any.

“You still think you can pull it off without the main guy?” Geoff’s still only heard about half of season one of _Black Tapes_ so far as Nic knows, but that doesn’t mean he hasn’t been subjected to a few complaints.

Nic throws the ball again. It’s not as graceful as Geoff had been, but he gets a decent amount of distance on it. “Honestly? I don’t know. It’s Alex’s call.”

“Yeah, you guys’ll figure it out,” Geoff says, as though that’s some kind of sure thing. “But take a break every once in a while, okay man?”

“What does that mean?” He glances sideways before he’s thought about it. Guilty reflexes.

“You know,” Geoff shrugs, eyes on the puddle Diane’s churning her way through at the other end of the dog run. “Sleep a few hours. Crazy shit like that.”

“Right.” Nic would argue with him over that, if he hadn’t spent most of last night tossing and turning. Nerves, and he wishes he didn’t know exactly why. Geoff turns to make eye contact, and his heart feels like it’s ricocheting off the walls of his chest.

It’s like the opposite of the haze in the worst way. Nic’s hyper aware of everything: The tips of his fingers and the hairs on the back of his neck and the raindrops leaking past the top of his jacket, starting to soak his shirt to his skin. His tongue feels heavy and stupid in his mouth and — and Geoff’s looking at him funny now, head cocked.

“Hey,” Nic jerks his head away, cups a hand around his mouth as he calls across the field. “C’mon Diane, bring it here girl.”

“You know I’m just giving you a hard time, right?” Geoff asks, and Nic can feel him watching, no matter how hard he tries to block it out. “I’m not gonna start acting like your mom.”

“My mom’s the one who taught me about sticking a flashlight under the covers after lights out to read,” Nic says, and tries whistling. That gets Diane’s attention. “So it probably wouldn’t work. Ball — get the ball.”

Diane starts wandering their way, ball left somewhere in the muck. Nic doesn’t really know what else he was expecting.

“You going to go get it?”

“Maybe she’ll remember it later?” Nic suggests, without much optimism. The rain’s light, but they’ve been out here long enough that Geoff’s shirt is stuck to his skin. Nic still doesn’t know how he’s managing without a coat.

“If you say so,” his elbow connects with Nic’s arm, just a light thing, and Nic digs his nails into his palms with the effort of holding himself steady.

If there were more room in his head — if being around Geoff didn’t seem to take up so much _space_ all of a sudden — if _Tanis_ weren’t using the rest of it —

Nic doesn’t know. Maybe he could a handle on something. At least one thing. The rain’s soaking through his jacket in earnest now. Turning up his collar doesn’t help.

“You wanna go find somewhere dry?” Geoff asks. “There’s got to be a place around here that’ll let her onto their patio if we dry off first.”

“Not really patio weather, is it?”

“Heaters,” Geoff points out, and Nic has to give him that. “How about it? I’ll buy your dog a beer.”

They’d still have Diane to run interference. And the beer. But Nic thinks about sitting across the table from Geoff, nowhere to look but his face and maybe the beer list. It’s exhausting, just to imagine.

“I should get some more work done. Hanukkah’s next weekend and I promised my parents I’d come back to Canada for the whole thing this time, and I’m pretty sure my mom’s going to try to convince me to stay the week after like my sister is. Which means I’ve got to get the next _Tanis_ uploaded before I drive up on Saturday, and Paul still thinks the stuff about Olympia Woods isn’t holding together right — and I’ve still got to help Alex with the launch — I don’t even know if I’m going to leave the office next week—” He’s got to stop talking so fast. Nic wonders if it’s another side effect of the cabin, that he an even worse liar than normal.

“Hey, hey,” Geoff knows, he has to know, but he’s letting Nic off, at least. “When you get back then, man. Deal?”

“Deal,” Nic says, and he should let it go, but, “Sorry, I’m not trying to blow you off. I’m really just busy, I’m not — deal. It’s a deal.”

Geoff gives him a quick, tight hug in the parking lot before they go and hopefully doesn’t notice when Nic can’t breathe until his car pulls away.

…

Nic’s mom has been threatening to throw out the last boxes of his stuff from high school at least since he got his green card nine years ago, but when he sneaks down to his parents’ basement early Monday morning they’re all still there, stacked up against the wall.

He takes a second to listen for footsteps above — nothing yet — before he goes to work. Bottom box on the far left, if he remembers right from last year’s visit. The shoebox he’s looking for is buried under a thin layer of old VHS tapes, paperbacks he hardly remembers reading and a junior high yearbook he’s sworn Alex will never see. Nic holds his breath a little, lifting the lid.

Nothing to worry about. The pot pipe’s still rolled up in a plastic baggie, along with a couple lighters and the scant remains of 2014’s dispensary haul.

He sets the box back in place just long enough to snap a phone picture of the scene.

_Going down memory lane_ , he adds, before hitting send on the text.

Upstairs, a floorboard creaks. Nic jams the baggie into his jacket pocket and shoves everything more or less into order. Diane’s already waiting at the back door when he gets up the stairs.

“Gonna go walk the dog,” he calls out. From another room, someone mutters a wordless affirmative that’s mostly drowned out as the coffee grinder starts up. His mom, probably. No one can say Nic doesn’t come by his shitty sleep habits naturally.

It’s a quiet neighbourhood, but he still passes a half dozen joggers on the way to the beach, dark shapes moving between the streetlights. Nic’s ducked into an alley just off the nearest entryway to the water when his phone buzzes in his back pocket.

_Pretty sure you shouldn’t smoke anything a decade old_

It’s not even 5:30 a.m. Nic’s sure Geoff’s not that much of an early riser.

_It’s just the pipe. I picked up some new stuff after I got over the border.  
_ _Sorry if I woke you up._

He tugs Diane back from the garbage bin she’s been nosing and sets the lighter to the bowl. It’s so much overkill — he’d be better off buying a pack of papers each time he comes up — but the nostalgia factor’s hard to beat.

**Geoff:** _How’s Vancouver?  
_ **Nic:** _Weird. No one’s talked to me about demons in days._

The beach is empty. Nic unsnaps Diane’s leash, follows behind at an amble as she heads for a clump of something gelatinous washed onto the sand, tail already wagging. Out in the distance, he can see container ships moored in the harbour mouth, silent, still and hulking. The tide’s rolling out — or maybe it’s in, he can never remember — and the moon’s three quarters of the way to full, hanging low in the pre-dawn sky. Down here, he could fool himself into thinking he’s only person awake for miles.

**Nic:** _My sister started listening to the show.  
_ **Nic:** _She asked me if we ever got that beer._

He hasn’t smoked enough to do more than take the edge off, but there’s something about the noise of the water, or the faint shape of the stars, or the early-morning chill that feels clarifying, somehow. Nic’s not sure when his head was this quiet and still attached to his body.

**Geoff:** _Yeah?  
_ **Nic:** _I told her I wasn’t giving her any spoilers.  
_ **Nic:** _She threw a sack of gelt at me._

Diane’s moved on from the clump of seaweed, in favour of racing along the edge of the water, clink of her tags and soft splashes floating back. Nic sets the lighter to the pipe again, watches the reflection of lights off the ocean as he inhales.

**Geoff:** _Home sweet home_  
**Nic:** _Something like that._  
**Nic:** _It’s quiet here.  
_ **Geoff:** _It’s five in the morning buddy_

_No, I mean,_ Nic starts tapping out, before reason catches up. He could explain it, but it’s a lot to write out one-handed. And Geoff might want to know, maybe, where all the noise in his head was coming from.

Alex would be easier to talk to for this. But there’s even more explaining he’d have to do there.

**Nic:** _Yeah, right. Go back to sleep, I’ll talk to you later.  
_ **Geoff:** _Already there man_

Nic lets Diane run until the first slivers of sun start to crest over the rim of the water.

…

Nic texts Geoff more pictures than he means to. Diane on the Seawall, carrying someone’s discarded beer can in her teeth (for a minute, before Nic had gotten himself covered in sand tearing it away). The reflection of the first four candles in the menorah off the front window of his parents’ house, just after sundown. An incredibly awkward selfie with his sister, after she’d asked who he was texting over breakfast one morning and wouldn’t give up until he admitted the beers guy from the podcast (her words) is one of his friends now.

Geoff seems to get into the swing of it too. Nic gets a case of beer, a shot of a pool table mid-game and a blurry selfie from his workplace Christmas party, Geoff in a shirt and tie with a half-drunk flush on his cheeks. The last one makes Nic’s head hurt like it hasn’t since he headed north. Nic’s grateful his parents buy their wine by the box after that.

It’s January before they see each other again in person.

That’s — not _entirely_ Nic’s fault anyway, because by the time he’s back from Canada it’s basically Christmas, and one of Nic’s friends in the mayor’s office invites him to a ridiculous New Year’s party he mostly remembers the next day, and one week into 2016, as he’s starting to edit together background audio for _The_ _Black Tapes’_ season two launch, Alex texts a row of police-siren emojis to his phone. Three minutes later they’re on Skype. If Nic squints, he can see the front door of the Strand Institute in the frame behind her.

“Are you out on the sidewalk?”

“He’s back.” Her face is flushed and there’s a fire in her eyes Nic hasn’t seen in, who knows. Months, probably.

No need to ask who she’s talking about. He can already tell they’re going to have to re-cut everything.

_Richard Strand just fucked up my weekend_ , he texts Geoff when Alex pauses the recap of her visit to Chicago to take a breath. _Beers next weekend instead? On me?_

_I swear I’m not avoiding you_ , he types out and deletes.

“Nic, are you listening?”

“Yes,” he shoves the phone across his desk, into a pile of papers, on instinct. “Yeah, I’m listening. So Strand’s going to do the show again?”

Alex hesitates for a minute. “I think we should be recording this conversation. Let me get back to the hotel and call you on a landline.”

Nic nods and tries to casually swipe his phone back from the papers. “I’ll go set up the sound booth.”

He’s doing one last check of his levels when his phone vibrates.

_Bring beer_ _up here next weekend and I’ll forgive you._

Nic’s mouthing the words without realizing. _Up here._ Fuck.

In the studio the phone rings, and in the moment Nic’s grateful for and hates Richard Strand in equal measure.

…

Geoff blocks the door, hands braced on either side of the frame and looks Nic up and down with a slow smile. “Looking good, man.”

“Thanks?”

He looks away, and the lack of direct eye contact’s already a relief. “I don’t know, forget it. You been sleeping more or something?”

“Uh, kind of,” the case of beer he’s dragged up from the car isn’t sitting right, cardboard edges starting to dig uncomfortably into his fingers. Nic tries to heft it up, put some of the weight against his chest, and mostly just knocks the bottles around. “I got pretty high last night? I guess that kind of helped.”

“And you didn’t invite me? Harsh,” Geoff laughs, and steps back from the doorway. “Good thing you brought me a case. Come on in.”

The place is pretty much the same as the last time Nic remembers seeing it. Not in a deja vu way — there’s no reason for it to feel weird stepping inside. “You want these in the kitchen?”

“I got it,” Geoff holds out his arms. “Don’t want to keep you from getting your shoes off.”

“Funny,” Nic says, and releases the beer into his custody. There are already a few red lines scored across his palms from the weight.

“You know it.” He disappears out of sight and there’s the sound of the fridge door unsealing, bottles rattling. “Strand still being a dick?”

“That’s a complicated question,” Nic says and, God, cryptic is catching. “Uh, let’s just say it’s gonna be an interesting season.”

“Interesting’s good, right?” Geoff’s head pops back through the doorway, and he’s six feet down the hall but Nic still jumps. “Cold one?”

“Sure, yeah.” He toes out of his shoes and takes the beer Geoff’s dangling his way by the bottom, as far away from his fingers as possible. “I guess interesting’s better than boring, yeah. I’m just not sure what interesting’s going to mean yet.”

“Are you ever?” Geoff says, and nudges him on his way from the kitchen to the couch. Nic hears himself laugh, sharp and a little too high.

“Right. Yeah. Right.”

Geoff’s sitting in the middle of the couch in an easy sprawl. Nic squeezes himself down at one end, tries to make it look like he’s not actually leaning over the arm. He needs — he needs to get a handle on this, fuck. It’s just Geoff. His friend Geoff. Nothing new here.

It had been easier with a border and cell phone screens between them. Texting hadn’t made his heart go this fast. He just needs to get back to that. Stop thinking about — anything. Stop thinking about anything. That sounds like a plan.

“I think I take it back.”

Nic gets the feeling he’s missed something. “What?”

“You okay?” Geoff says. “You’re not drinking.”

“Oh, right.” He takes a sip. It’s a little hoppier than he likes, but decent. “Still — still thinking about work, I guess.”

“Tanis shit?” Geoff’s still watching him. Or, more accurately, his beer. Nic takes another drink and picks at the edge of the label with his thumbnail. “You working on anything new there?”

“I mean, I’ve still got about three months of episodes to finish,” Nic points out. The label’s not coming off evenly. A piece flakes away under his nail, leaving a mush of white paper and glue behind. “I haven’t been thinking about it much yet.”

“Damn,” Geoff says with a put on, half-laughing sigh.

“What? I thought you liked the podcast.”

“Yeah, but I got all the spoilers,” he’s smirking, but there’s this strange sort of warmth to it. Nic looks back to the label, now crisscrossed in jagged white lines, and tries to ignore what’s turning into a too-familiar ache. “I already know you end up at Tanis.”

“Maybe Tanis,” Nic amends.

“Dude, seriously? You’re still doing that?”

“I still don’t know what I think that was.” Nic can’t pretend the results of his hypnosis sessions have been comforting on that end, so far, but it’s not like that’s proof of much. They haven’t worked up to the patch of missing time in his head yet, where the real answers might lie. Or not. Nic’s not sure he knows what to think of the whole hypnotherapy thing, either.

“I was definitely some weird shit, though.”

“Yeah. That we can agree on.”

“I think you need to stop thinking,” Geoff says, and Nic barely suppresses a laugh at how accurate that piece of advice is. “Drink more beer. You wanna watch a movie or something, take your mind off?”

They wouldn’t have to look at each other for two hours. Maybe Nic could get his brain to calm down, or at least temporarily shut up. “Yeah, okay.”

“Cool.” Geoff flicks the TV on, pushes some buttons on a remote until the Netflix screen pops up, then throws it at him. An underhand lob, but Nic’s still nowhere near ready and it hits him in the arm. “Pick something, dude.”

“Any thoughts?”

“Whatever,” Geoff shrugs, slouching back into the arm on the opposite end of the couch, beer balanced on his thigh. Not much farther away, really, but the breathing room helps.

He’s scrolling through film titles when Geoff says, “Yeah, on second thoughts, veto.”

“What?”

“No work shit. You need a break.”

“Horror films count as work now?”

“For you?” Geoff gives him a look over the top of his beer bottle and — okay, maybe Nic can see the argument there.

“So I guess documentaries are out too?”

Geoff groans. “Would a comedy fucking kill you?”

The concern’s misguided, it turns out. Nic hardly absorbs the movie at all. It’s not that he isn’t trying, but every time he thinks he starts to get a handle on the plot Geoff is laughing, or muttering under his breath at the screen, or turning to catch Nic’s eye, to see if he’s caught the joke, or touching Nic’s shoulder to see if he wants another beer, or — fuck, just sitting there, head slightly back and throat bobbing around another drink, smile on his face, light from the TV bouncing over his skin.

Geoff’s there. That’s a lot of the problem, summed up. Nic’s fighting competing urges to slide across the couch cushions and lean his head on his shoulder and to run blindly into the night. At least doing nothing at all is an easy kind of compromise.

When the credits roll across the screen and Geoff stands to stretch and collect their empties off the coffee table, he isn’t sure whether to feel relieved or not.

“Hey, uh,” Geoff’s got his back to him, but he pauses at the doorway to the kitchen. “You staying over?”

“I should head back,” Nic says, and that _is_ relief, and it makes him feel like an asshole. “I need to let Diane out.”

“You should bring her out next time,” Geoff says. “Yard’s fenced.”

“Yeah. I guess I wasn’t thinking.”

He’s got his shoes most of the way on when Geoff reappears. “Oh, you meant get back—”

“Now, yeah.” He concentrates on a shoelace. Talking to the top of his sneaker’s easier. “Sorry, I should have—”

“It’s fine.” Geoff shifts his weight from one foot to the other, then back. Nic’s fingers fumble with the bow. Tying’s not normally this complicated of a project. “Hey, Nic?”

The lace snugs into place. No excuse not to stand up and look at him. “Yeah?”

Geoff’s mouth opens, closes. His eyes scan across Nic’s face, long enough to be uncomfortable. (Not that it takes all that long.) “Are you — you okay to drive?”

He’d barely finished that second beer by the time the movie ended. “I’m fine.”

“Just checking,” Geoff says, and flashes him a smile.

Nic feels like an asshole again, and he’s not even sure why.

…

_“The apartment looked like it had been torn apart, like in the movies. Ransacked. Furniture was overturned, drawers opened, broken glass covered the kitchen floor. And there was a buzzing, a deep electrical sound._

_“In the dim light that came through the hall, we could see that one of the walls looked like it had been painted black. Which was strange, considering the other walls were an off-white colour._

_“_ _Nic finally turned on the light, and... well. The wall wasn't black. It was covered in blood. A lot of blood.”_

…

By the time the waitress brings him another round, the whiskey’s stopped burning on the way down. Nic regrets that, kind of. The distraction had been good while it lasted.

Paul had told him to stay home after he and Terry had collected him from the police station (again ). They’d said the same thing to Alex. Nic wonders if she’s following the advice any better. She hasn’t returned any of his messages yet. No way to know. Maybe she’s talking it over with Amalia. That’d be good, probably. Nic hasn’t really had a decent talk with Amalia since she got back from Russia, but she’s always known how to handle herself. If there’s anyone who can take a dead body in a stride, it’s got to be her.

The ice in his refill’s already melting. Nic tips his head back, sends half of a remaining cube down his throat along with the liquor and nearly chokes himself in the process. It takes a couple good, solid coughs to clear his airway again, and that’s fine. The noise from his throat almost drowns out the buzzing in his ears, comes close to chasing away the image of a those flies, droning and crawling and buzzing around the body —

Almost. He catches the waitress’s eye a few tables over, makes a signal for another.

He’s three deep when a chair on the other side of the table slides out with a scrape of wood on tile.

“Hey.” Geoff drops into the seat, jacket still zipped up, cheeks flushed from the cold. “Rush hour traffic was a fucking nightmare, man, sorry. What are we drinking?”

“Whiskey.” There’s only ice in the bottom of the glass. Nic sucks a cube into his mouth to get at whatever film of alcohol’s clinging on. At least Geoff’s arrival seems to have sent the waitress back their way.

“Same again?”

“Make mine a double,” Geoff says, as Nic’s nodding.

“Mine too, actually.”

“Not gonna give me a chance to catch up?” Geoff turns back as she leaves and maybe Nic’s face is doing something, or maybe the smile was just one of those ‘be nice to servers’ things, but either way his expression dims. “How many have you had already?”

Nic holds up the appropriate number of fingers and bites through the ice cube with a crack that seems to echo in his skull.

“Damn.” There’s a note of approval in there somewhere, Nic’s pretty sure. “The fuck happened?”

So Nic tells him about Wendy Hochman and her weird baby monitor sounds, about the creeping thing and the chanting and the pentagrams, about Maddie Franks’ voice, buried in hour three of a sound file that should have ended after 20 minutes.

The bar’s filled up. Dinner rush. He’s made it as far as the Hochmans’ disappearance when the waitress returns with their glasses. Geoff says “hold on a minute,” motions her to stay, and tips most of his drink back in a single go. “We’re going to need another round.”

Nic can’t disagree.

“What the fuck, man,” Geoff says, not for the first time, once she’s out of ear shot. “They’re just gone?”

“I guess. I don’t know. There’s—” the roof of his mouth’s gone dry. Another swallow of whiskey helps, some. “There’s more. We went to Maddie’s house today, to see if she had any idea what happened.”

“Shit,” Geoff says, soft enough that Nic sees his mouth move more than he hears it. “She wasn’t there either?”

“No — I, I wish, actually. That would have been—” Nic rubs a hand across his face, tries to centre himself. “She hung herself. Or someone hung her, I guess, maybe. From the ceiling fan.”

Geoff reaches across the table and pulls Nic’s drink out of his grip. This time, he doesn’t stop drinking until he’s drained it. “Holy shit.”

“That’s — yeah, pretty much what I said.” There’s about a swallow of liquid left in Geoff’s glass. Nic figures it’s fair play to steal that. “It was… awful, honestly. Her eyes were still open, like she was staring at us. And there were these flies everywhere, and—” the image rises behind his eyes again, and it’s not any better than it was the first couple hundred times. Nic shoves the empty glass away, in favour of sinking his face into his hands. “Fuck.”

“You called the cops, right?”

“Yeah.”

There’s a thump of glass on wood and Nic looks up long enough to see Geoff nod to their waitress again. “Keep ‘em coming, okay?”

…

Nic doesn’t remember when Geoff started holding his hand.

His face is kind of numb, and when he lifts his glass to his mouth, it’s like his arm is moving independently of his shoulder and brain, pulled on strings he can’t see from somewhere in the bar’s ceiling. But he thinks he ought to have noticed Geoff’s hand over his, thumb rubbing across his knuckles. Nic gets the impression it’s been there a while, if only because when he flexes his fingers Geoff starts, like he’d forgotten about it too.

They haven’t really talked much, which Nic is so okay with. After the conversation with Paul and Terry on the ride home, the hours at the police station, the 911 call, the few, frantic minutes he and Alex had spent in the hall outside Maddie’s apartment trying to figure out what to do —

_“This our fault,” Alex had whispered, as Nic fumbled with his phone screen, trying and failing to get his password in, to pull up the keypad, to call someone. “We did this, didn’t we?”_

— yeah, silence is not a problem. Nic hates to even break it, but, “I gotta go to the bathroom.”

Geoff watches in silence as he gets to his feet and finds the world tilted about 45 degrees off the angle he remembers. He reels sideways, catches himself on the chair back until he’s got his feet under him again. How many drinks deep are they now? He should’ve kept the glasses. Could’ve counted those up.

He catches a glimpse of himself in the bathroom mirror at some point. Red face, red eyes. A splash of water helps. Sort of. God, he’s tired. How long has he been tired? Nic laughs, lets his head thump forward against the glass and squeezes his eyes shut. That’s a level of question he’s either too drunk for or won’t ever be drunk enough for. Both? Who knows.

Geoff’s still where he left him, once he’s crossed the thousand miles back to the front of the bar. One hand cradling his chin, eyes on the table top, other arm stretched towards Nic’s seat, as though he’d never left. There’s a billfold on the table now, though. That’s new.

“Did we get cut off?”

Geoff nods and doesn’t look up. Nic spills himself back into his seat (the glasses rattle when he slams a knee into the table, sending a bright line of pain up his leg) and pulls the bill towards him. That’s — either less or more than he was expecting. One or the other.

“On me, okay?”

Geoff doesn’t say anything. His hand’s still almost level with Nic’s. Flat against the table, so he can’t slide his fingers under it like before, but he can rest his own on top. He digs his wallet out with his free hand, shoves his credit card into the folder and the whole thing to the edge of the table. Geoff doesn’t look up for any of it, but his fingers knit between Nic’s and squeeze, hard.

Nic ends up filling out the credit slip wrong-handed.

“You ready to go?” he tugs at Geoff’s hand, and that finally gets him to look up, brow furrowed like Nic’s asked him something harder than that. And it’s not like looking into a mirror, because, obviously not. But the look on his face is familiar. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” he squeezes his eyes shut for a second, blinks a few times. “You heading out?”

“Uh huh,” he pushes his chair back a couple inches, but Geoff’s not moving yet. “You coming?”

“To your place?”

“Yeah, it’s only—” he fishes his phone out, checks the screen, “it’s not even ten yet. And I need to feed the dog.”

Geoff gives him a look that goes on so long Nic’s not sure if he’s zoned out. “Are you sure?”

“Yeah, if you want.” He tries standing, and this time he knows enough to put his free hand on the table for balance. Geoff’s in a pretty similar state, if the way he sways, fingers clenched on Nic’s, is anything to go by. “Hey, are you sure you’re okay?”

“Lotta fucking whiskey, man,” Geoff says, and pulls him in the direction of the door.

It’s cold outside, but not as bad as Nic was expecting, even with his coat open. Alcohol’s good insulation. “It’s a pretty short walk, is that—“

“It’s fine.”

“Good, cool.” It occurs to Nic they’re still holding hands. It’s less of a concern than he’d expected.

Diane’s sitting by the front door when they get in, tail thumping the floor as soon as he’s got the door halfway open. Geoff drops his hand to rub her head, and Nic uses the distraction to try to make it look like he’s leaning against the wall casually, and not because it’s the only thing keeping him up as he kicks his shoes off.

“I’m gonna give her some food. You want a beer?”

Diane slips out from under Geoff’s hands and starts for the kitchen. He watches her go, seems to take a second to register the question. “Yeah. Sure.”

Nic gets the kibble into the dog bowl fine, but bending down to snag two bottles off a low shelf in the fridge makes the world shimmer at the sides of his vision. Nic leans his face into the cool air and sucks in a breath. That seems to fix it.

“Do you want the IPA or the other one?” he makes a wide arc around Diane’s still wagging tail, and clips one of the bottles against the corner of the kitchen doorway. The beer doesn’t spill, but he raises it to his mouth on instinct. “Uh, guess you’re drinking the other one.”

Geoff doesn’t say anything. It takes Nic a second to find him, actually. No one’s hit the living room light, and with only the kitchen and the front hall lit up, the place is gloomy. That and — drunk. Normally, Nic would’ve thought to check the couch fist instead of scanning the edges of the room.

Geoff’s sitting at the far end, head tilted back against the cushions, staring at a ceiling.Like he might have gone to sleep, except his eyes are open and looking his way when Nic takes a seat next to him.

“Hey,” he sets the beers on the floor and leans back, until they’ve got their heads at the same angle so he can look him in the eye. “Are you sure you’re okay? Because you’re not — you don’t seem okay. You seem kind of, I don’t know. Not okay?”

“Just, you know, thinking about shit.” It could just be the lighting, but Geoff looks like as tired as Nic feels.

“Is it a Karl thing?” The circumstances aren’t exactly dissimilar. Maybe he shouldn’t have mentioned the hanging. Or Maddie’s eyes, or the flies, or any of the other stuff Nic wishes he hadn’t just pushed back to the front of his brain. He could have just said she died, left it at that. “Sorry if I brought up bad memories, or anything.”

Geoff shrugs, sort of. Seems like that’s what that shoulder movement is meant to be. “Don’t worry about it.”

“Are you sure?” Nic leans over a little, just enough to bump his elbow against his arm. Might as well take a page out of the old Van Sant playbook. Geoff follows when he pulls back, leaning sideways until their shoulders brush, and Nic can feel a faint point of warmth where they connect.

He’s being watched again. Geoff’s eyes are glassy, but he’s pretty sure his are the same way. Not for the first time, Nic has the sense of being weighed against some unseen thing.

When Geoff sighs and closes the last of the gap to kiss him, Nic’s almost embarrassed to be caught off guard.

It’s not a good kiss, really. Geoff comes in fast and too hard, hits his mouth left of centre. When Nic leans into it their teeth connect, and the taste of whiskey’s less welcome than it had been half an hour ago. Geoff’s fingers snag in his hair and Nic grabs at his neck to pull him in, fingers digging between the tendons.

God, he’s missed this.

His teeth sink into Geoff’s lower lip, and Geoff groans, hands scrabbling down Nic’s front to push under his shirt. His skin’s still cold from the walk, makes Nic’s stomach jump at the touch. It’s fine. Good contrast, when the rest of him feels like he’s just been set alight.

Geoff gets an arm around his back, nails scraped along the ridges of his spine. Chest-to-chest like this, Nic can feel how hard he’s breathing.

“You wanna—”

He doesn’t get to finish. “Fuck, yes.”

The beers are still sitting by his feet. Nic snags them on the way up, tips his own back and offers Geoff’s out blindly. Not a full on chug, but respectable. He’s not 19 any more, after all. Geoff’s still drinking when he comes up for air, throat working as he swallows, and Nic’s not sober or patient enough to wait for him to finish. Geoff jerks, starts coughing, and Nic lingers over the hollow above his collarbone, kissing openmouthed at his skin.

“Fuck, fuck, okay man, I got it.” He’s cradling the back of Nic’s head even as he’s trying to move away. Nic knocks a shoulder into his chest and they stumble apart long enough for Geoff to grab at his face and pull him up for another kiss. The beer bottles get left on one of Nic’s bookshelves on the way out of the room. Geoff’s shirt lands on the floor. Nic gets his unbuttoned, but Geoff’s using the two open sides to guide him along. When he pulls too hard, about halfway down the hall to the bedroom, Nic knocks both of them into the wall.

He’s sucked a round, reddened mark at the base of Geoff’s throat when he feels Geoff’s fingers slip from his hair to his shoulders and push him back. “Bedroom?”

He missed his chance to lead Geoff by his shirt. Nic fumbles at his belt loops, misses, hooks his fingers in the waistband of his jeans instead and tows him forward.

They hit the bed together from the side, go sprawling the wrong way across the mattress. Nic rolls onto his back, starts to pull Geoff with him and everything —

_Lurches._

Bile at the back of his throat. The last beer was a mistake.

The bathroom’s just down the hall from the bedroom. Lucky. Nic’s not sure he could have made it further before his stomach heaves again and his knees fold. There’s nothing but acid and alcohol to come up, and he can’t remember if that’s worse than the alternative.

“Oh shit,” Geoff says, from somewhere behind him. The doorway, probably, but when Nic lifts his head to look the world tilts again.

“Shit,” Geoff says again, when he’s finished coughing. “You want some water?”

Nic hopes his groan comes out sounding like something. His eyes are watering and it feels like there might be stomach acid in his nose. It occurs to him, for the first time in several hours, that he and Alex are supposed to go back to the police station for more questioning tomorrow morning.

He’s still got his head rested on the toilet seat when there’s noise behind him again and Geoff swims into view with a glass. “How are you doing?”

Nic scuffs away some of the moisture beading at the corner of one eye. “Really drunk.”

“Yeah,” Geoff sets the glass on the floor next to him. He’s got his shirt back on. Maybe he did before too. Nic hasn’t had a chance to look until now. “You gonna stay here for a while?”

He lifts his head again, more cautious. His stomach mostly stays in place this time, and the water seems to help. “I think I’m okay.”

He makes most of the trip back into the bedroom with one arm hooked around Geoff’s neck and the other against the wall. Lying down’s better this time. No surprises.

“Lie on your side, okay buddy?” Geoff says, and tugs Nic back by the shoulder until he’s not facedown on the mattress. “Yeah, just stay like that.”

He waits for the mattress to dip, for Geoff to slide in next to him, but it doesn’t come. When he looks up, it’s just in time to catch Geoff rubbing at his eyes. “Are you—?”

“I’m gonna take the couch for the night.” He reaches out, but Nic’s already fading. If Geoff connects, he misses it. “Go to sleep, Nic.”

So he does. 


	5. Are We Cool?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Spoilers through The Black Tapes episode 2x04 and Tanis bonus episode 2. Also thank you to everyone who's encouraged and/or pelted me with raccoon emojis as I tried to finish this fic. You can share my dumpster any time, friends.

**_NIC:_ ** _Did you get home okay? I didn’t hear you leave_

**_GEOFF:_ ** _Hey man how’s your head?_

**_NIC:_ ** _Not great_

**_NIC:_ ** _Really sorry about last night_

**_GEOFF:_ ** _Don’t be_

**_NIC:_ ** _Tell me I didn’t puke on you._

**_GEOFF:_ ** _You didn’t_

**_NIC:_ ** _Thank god_

**_NIC:_ ** _Sorry_

**_NIC:_ ** _Are we cool?_

**_GEOFF:_ ** _Yeah_

**_GEOFF:_ ** _Gotta get back to work now._

**_NIC:_ ** _Right. Beers on me next time?_

_(read 10:28 a.m.)_

…

Feb 15, 2016

 **FROM: Nic Silver - PNWS  
** TO: _REDACTED  
_ SUBJECT: Job offer?

_Hey MK,_

_I’m going to start working on season two of Tanis in a few weeks, any chance you want your job back?_

_I talked to Terry and Paul and they said the listener numbers are looking good, and they’re willing to sign off on a budget increase for research. So, if money’s an issue, I’ve got you covered there._

_Let me know if you’re interested. I know things got a little weird at the end of last season, but I’d like to have you in on this again. Or hear if you’re still alive before I start to worry—_

Nic sighs, and drags his cursor over the last few lines of the email, text briefly highlighted in blue before he hits delete.

…

The dinner invite takes him by surprise.

Amalia’s been back nearly a month now, and it’s not that they haven’t spoken — Nic probably owes her several glasses of wine to make up for his attempt to explain Tanis while she and Alex were trying to leave the studio for lunch one day — but she’s been Alex’s friend more than his since they stopped dating, amiable as that breakup had been. Nic’s not even sure he’d thought to give her his number.

But, she picked his favourite sushi place and when he texts back to ask if Alex is coming too all he gets in response is: _No._

With a hook like that, how can he not investigate?

She’s already got a table in the back when he arrives after work. Nic finds her reading something on her phone, one hand around a cup of warmed sake, nails drumming on the ceramic. She looks good — brown hair swept over one shoulder and that sort of smudgey eye makeup thing that makes her eyes look huge and black. No dark circles. One person in Alex’s apartment is sleeping, at least.

“I’m here.” He’d meant to lead with something better than that, but in his own defence he’s spent several hours staring at a countdown clock on Reddit and trying not to panic. Also Amalia seems pretty into whatever’s on her phone. News story, maybe. Or an email? It’s hard to tell upside-down in this light.

She looks up from the text and Nic thinks he can feel it, as her eyes track up his body to his face. “Hello Nic.”

“Hi. Hey.” He pulls the chair out, and throws his coat over the back rungs. Amalia watches him sit with a smile that doesn’t seem to make it to her eyes. Not that Nic can tell for sure. Something about the lighting and angle of the table seems to put her half in shadow. “Were you waiting long?”

“Not long.” Amalia glances down at her phone again before flicking it off. Uncomfortable, or maybe just distracted. “How have you been?”

 _Paranoid_ isn’t a good answer, so that’s honesty out the window one minute in. Amalia probably doesn’t need to hear just how long it took him to verify the exact date and minute Alex had opened up the Unsound on the office computers for the first time and called Nic over. (Longer than it should have. MK would’ve known in 30 seconds.)

“I’m fine,” Nic says. “You?”

Amalia does something with her mouth, like she’s tasted something unpleasant. “I’m concerned about Alexandra.”

He could have called that one. “Yeah, I mean, I guess she’s been — off? Kind of?”

“You could say off, yes.” Her eyes go back to her phone, that curl of her lip getting more pronounced. “Should we order food?”

“Is something wrong with you and Alex?”

“Food first.” She’s fidgeting with the menu, chewing on the edge of her lip. Holding something back. Nic doesn’t think he’s seen her do that, ever.

He could push, but he’s not sure where to start. Between the police investigation and Paul and Terry’s sudden insistence they take another look at the deeper mysteries of geocaching, Alex hasn’t mentioned Amalia in a couple weeks. Until she gives him something he’s in the dark.

God knows what they’re supposed to talk about instead, though. They’ve already established Russia’s a no-go and, again, anonymous countdown clock located via hexadecimal code’s not much of a fun office story. Nic’s sure they used to have things to talk about. Music, maybe? News stories? God, when was the last time he actually read the news?

“Did you every hear anything about the severed feet?”

Amalia looks up at him, at least. “What?”

“Technically it’s shoes,” Nic says, “mostly right shoes, with feet inside them. I guess they’ve been washing up all along the coastline for a while now. Terry brought it up the other day, actually, when I said I was going to get back into working on _Tanis_ , and I figured it was just going to be a few feet. Like, five maybe? But it’s a lot of feet, once you look into it.”

He’s not sure if he’s surprised or not, when she breaks into a smile. “Alright, tell me about these feet.”

“Yeah, I guess some people think it might be shipwrecks? Or maybe plane crashes.There’s not a lot from the cops to go on. At least, not that I can find without— uh, I’m having trouble with my researcher right now, so. There’s not much to look at but conspiracy theory boards.”

Amalia pushes her phone aside and leans forward, chin cupped in one hand. The whole move seems so deliberate somehow. Something about the way she lines her phone case up perfectly with the edge of the table, one quick sweep away from hitting the floor. “I wouldn’t think you’d mind that, Nic.”

She’s teasing him, he’s pretty sure. Then again, the 10 months they’d dated _had_ overlapped with Nic’s obsession with the Dyatlov Pass incident.

They get most of the way through dinner on the strength of foot appearances between B.C. and Oregon. Nic’s kind of impressed how long he can keep mystery feet going for, but in his defence there really hadn’t been much else to do, research-wise, while Alex was re-piloting _The Black Tapes_. Amalia’s egging him on too, he’s pretty sure. Nic’s interviewed enough people, he can mostly tell when someone’s doing it back to him.

So, she’s stalling. That’s fine. It’s good prep for him, at least. He’s pretty sure at least some of this conversation has to be useable for _Tanis_ , if he can remember it until he gets home to take notes.

When they’ve gotten all the way to the cheque without every circling back to the topic at hand, though, it starts to feel like he might have say something.

Amalia takes the billfold before Nic can even think about it. “I’ll pay.”

“Are we going to talk about Alex before you do?”

She sighs. “Not here, Nic.”

That makes the whole dinner invitation that much more confusing, but what’s he going to do? Say no? “Did you want to get a coffee or a drink or something?”

“I was hoping we could go to your apartment.” No hesitation this time. She’s looking at him dead on, one eyebrow cocked, small hint of a smile. Flirty? Or just direct? It’s been a while, but he remembers it was always hard to tell with Amalia.

“To talk about Alex, right?”

“Something like that.” And Nic’s not sure how he’d missed it,but it’s not until she’s paid their bill and pushed her chair out and risen to her feet that he notices the duffel bag that must have been tucked under her chair the whole time.

“Uh, what’s that?”

“It’s complicated,’” Amalia slings the bag over her shoulder. It’s definitely full, though Nic couldn’t guess what of. Stolen rubles? Demonic artefacts? It says something, he’s sure, that both seem plausible.

“Every time someone says that to me lately, I get the feeling they just don’t want to answer my question.”

She walks out past him without a backward glance, as if she’s the one who knows where the car’s parked. “Not here.”

It’s a weird ride home. Nic’s run out of feet to talk about (and there’s a phrase he couldn’t have imagined thinking a year ago), and Amalia’s strangely quiet. Playing with her phone again, it looks like, when he glances over at a red light.

Not for the first time lately, he’s glad to have Diane to greet him at the door, if only to defuse some tension. “I need to take her for a walk. Could we talk outside?”

“That’s fine.” She set her duffel bag in the living room, next to the couch. Probably not full of cash, if she’s willing to leave it.

They’ve gone a block and Diane’s stopped to sniff a newspaper box when Nic tries again. “So, Alex?”

“She’s been acting strange. Asking strange questions,” Amalia shoves her hands in her pockets. Her breath clouds in the cool night air. Somehow, it just seems to make the whole situation that much more mysterious. Like a fog rolling in.

“That’s what we do, isn’t it?” Nic gives Diane’s leash a small tug, enough to get her moving again. “You’ve heard her podcast, right?”

“She’s been… angrier,” Amalia says, like he hasn’t tried a joke at all.“She accuses me of sneaking up on her if I don’t sound trumpets before leaving my room. This morning she yelled at me over the amount of coffee grounds I’d put in the machine.”

“Alex _is_ pretty serious about coffee lately.”

Amalia frowns at him.

“Sorry,” Nic says, reflexively. “It’s just the insomnia, right? You know what she’s been sleeping like. It’s going to make anyone cranky.”

“I’ve heard her outside my door. Late at night.”

“It’s a small apartment—”

“Nic. It’s not normal.”

And the thing is, it’s not, is it? Nic’s heard the sleep notes, and the notes that aren’t notes at all, just minutes and minutes of dead air and static. He’s seen that look Alex has been getting lately, like she’s staring at something far off that he can’t see — that look he’s pretty sure would be familiar, except if he’s ever looked in a mirror in the midst of a haze it didn’t exactly stick in his memory.

“What do you think we should do?”

“I think it would be better for the both of us to have some time apart. There have been,” Amalia purses her lips, that same strange look she’d had at the restaurant flitting over her face, “other instances.”

“Are you — you don’t think she’s dangerous.” He can’t believe he’s even saying the words out loud. Alex is sharp and scary-smart when she wants to be, but she’s 5’2 and Nic’s literally seen her try to trap fruit flies in the PNWS break room so she can release them outside.

Amalia’s quiet.

“Yeah, you’re right,” Nic says. “The whole roommate thing, right? Gets weird sometimes? Maybe you should stay somewhere else for a few days.”

“I think that’s exactly what needs to happen.” Amalia gives him a look that’s strangely hopeful. “Would you mind?”

“Would I—” Nic stops, thinks about the duffel bag sitting on the floor of his apartment. “Oh.”

…

He’s pretty impressed, actually, at the speed to which his arrangement with Amalia goes to hell. They haven’t even made it four days and here’s Alex staring him down, eyes narrowed and arms crossed.

_“_ _I know you wouldn't be against this if Strand was in that room alone.”_

_“_ _What does Strand in the room have to do with anything?”_

_“Are you seeing Amalia again?”_

Does it count as seeing if he and Amalia stayed up until three a.m. on Monday night, eating cold pad thai out of takeout containers and arguing over the journalistic veracity of _Making a Murderer_? Nic would say no, but Nic’s not recording his best source and one of his best friends during private conversations, so it’s entirely possible he’s drawing different boundaries here.

_“Jesus Alex, that’s not — I’d feel the same way no matter who you were eavesdropping on.”_

_“I don’t think so. I know you, Nic.”_

It’s a stupid thing, but for some reason Nic can’t help but think of Geoff. If anyone were going to find this situation a fucked up kind of funny, he would. Assuming Nic had told him anything about this, which now that he’s had the thought makes him feel strangely guilty. That, and the illegal recording, and Alex staring at him, cold eyed, like he’s some management higher-up trying to spike a story. Like he’s a stranger, instead of her best friend — her best friend who hasn’t even talked to her about the most obvious reason why he wouldn’t be sleeping with Amalia again, even if it seemed like she wanted to.

God, what a mess.

_“Could you please stop recording?”_

_…_

Nic loses track of how many times the phone rings before Geoff picks up.

“Hey man.”

“Hey, how are you?”

“Not bad, not bad. You working on _Tanis_ yet?”

“I — good, yeah. I’m getting there, yeah.” He licks his lips, takes a breath that hopefully doesn’t register through the phone. “You’re doing good?”

Geoff laughs. Shit, Nic had asked that already, hadn’t he? “All good here.”

“That’s good. Hey, I know it’s short notice but do you want to get a drink tonight?”

“What’s up?” Geoff doesn’t sound quite the same. Like the laughter’s gone out of it, somehow.

“It’s been a pretty weird week here. Again, I guess.” Weird’s underselling it, but Geoff’s another person on a long, long list who doesn’t need to hear about hexadecimal timers and sleep chanting and the expression on Alex’s face before she’d walked out of the recording studio and slammed the door. “Yeah, weird and… not great. I could use a drink.”

There’s a pause on the line. “I can’t.”

“Oh,” Nic hadn’t really planned for this. “Right, okay. Uh.”

“Sorry dude.”

“Yeah, okay. Do you have work or—”

 _“_ Maybe some other time,” Geoff says. And Nic knows that tone, has used that tone. Has used that tone on Geoff, actually, which would make this karma, if he believed in anything like that.

“How about this weekend? Next week?”

“Yeah, maybe.”

“Hey, this isn’t about—” Except why would it be about the night of Maddie Franks’ death? They’re cool. Geoff said so. Nic’s got it in text message and everything. Doesn’t get much more official than that. They’re fine.

Even if it really, really feels like they’re not.

“Huh?”

“Nothing,” Nic says, too fast. “I’ll talk to you later, okay?”

“Sounds good, buddy.”

“Right.” What else can he say? “Sounds good.”

…

_“Due to unforeseen circumstances surrounding the health of Alex Reagan, we're forced to take a hiatus from production. Alex is going away for a few weeks, and then we're going to be right back on schedule.”_

Nic gets as far as _hey you wanna_ before deleting the text message. His phone doesn’t ring when he’s at the liquor store down the block from his apartment, and why would it? Who would call?

He buys a bottle of something brown and goes home alone.

_…_

Amalia comes in at 2 a.m. in a swirl of air that smells like cloves and perfume. She’s got her heels in one hand, and she turns the key in the lock careful and slow, to the point where it opens almost noiselessly. Nic would appreciate the effort not to wake him, if he weren’t lying on the couch with all the lights on, contemplating his text messages on three per cent battery life. 

“Hey ‘Malia.”

“I don’t know why I thought you would be sleeping.” She drops her shoes in the entryway, comes over to sit on the coffee table next to his head. Up close, the clove smell has a faint acrid undertone, ash and burnt matches. Nic didn’t know she still smoked. There haven’t been any cigarettes around the apartment, as far as he knows. Guess he can’t read anyone any more. “What’s wrong?”

He could argue she’s seen him up this late half the nights she’s stayed here. Half the time he hasn’t even slept long enough to make pulling out the couch worthwhile. But who else is going to tell her? Not Alex.

Yeah, not Alex. 

“Everything sucks,” Nic says, which about sums it up. 

“It usually does.” She’s got a look like she might pat him on the head, under different circumstances. “Do we have any alcohol left or have you drunk it all?”

“There’s scotch in the kitchen.” 

“Good.” She comes back a few minutes later with the bottle. Sans glasses, but with a worried look. “How much have you had to drink tonight?”

He’d poured himself three fingers to start. Managed about three sips of it, too, before giving up and dumping the rest down the sink. “I didn’t feel like drinking alone.”

Amalia unscrews the bottle cap and takes a long swig before passing it his way. “Why not call the man you’re seeing?”

Nic coughs, and the scotch burns down his airway same as down his throat. “What?”

“You heard me.”

She takes the bottle back, at least. Nic pushes himself into a real sitting position and that’s time enough to get most of the coughing under control. “I — I never —”

“You’ve spent every night since I’ve been here looking at his texts. And you’ve got two different sizes of condoms in your bedside table.”

It could be the alcohol metabolizing via his lungs, but Nic feels dazed. “You went through my stuff?”

Amalia shrugs.

“It’s not what you think,” Nic says. 

“Alright.”

“We’re not — we’re friends.” Nic frowns around the word. It doesn’t sit in his mouth as well as it used to.

“And you couldn’t call your friend to come drink with you?” Amalia takes another slug of scotch, and Nic has to admire the way she does it, the sharp, graceful flex of her wrist, the slight toss of her head. Maybe things would be easier right now if he’d run with Alex’s suspicions, suggested they share the bed the first night she’d come over. 

Maybe, if the thought didn’t make his chest hurt for all the wrong reasons.

“Yeah, no. I guess we were friends. I don’t know what we are any more.” He holds his hand out, and Amalia hands the bottle back. “I think I screwed up.”

“Should I ask?” 

It takes less time to tell her than it feels like it should. Only about half the bottle. And a lot of that’s to get through retelling that first night, in back of the bar. 

“And, yeah, now he’s not really talking to me,” Nic says, to bring it to a close. “So that’s awesome.”

“I don’t think I’d be speaking with you either,” Amalia says.

“Wow, thanks.”

“Sorry,” Amalia says, not sounding it.

“Fuck,” Nic runs a hand over his face. “What do I — I should apologize, right?”

“You could tell him how you feel about him.”

“I don’t even know how to explain that.” He raises the bottle, but doesn’t get all the way to his lips. “What do I say? Hey Geoff, every time I see you my heart does,” he squeezes at the air with his free hand, “this _thing_. What even is that?”

Amalia raises her eyebrows at him and takes the bottle back.

Nic’s had those moments of something clicking into place. The last fact to make a story, the information that makes everything else make sense. This isn’t that. It’s more like coming into a room and seeing everything that’s always been there, just slightly from the left. Like re-reading a book and noticing another detail. “Oh.”

“Figure something out?”

“I, uh, think I really need to make a phone call.”

“Nic,” Amalia says again, and there’s a gentleness there he hadn’t heard before. “It’s three o’clock in the morning.”

…

He makes it to 10 a.m. on Monday before he calls. 

This time, Nic counts the rings. Nine of them, before the call connects. To his credit, he only thinks about hanging up once. Twice, if you count the split second after pushing the call button in the first place.

“Hey Nic, how’s—”

“Do you want to go for a walk?” Nic asks. 

“Uh. Right now?” Geoff sounds normal. He thinks. Nic’s not sure he’s got the capacity to determine any more. “Little bit of a weird time–”

“No, sorry, I meant Saturday. Or Sunday? I was going to take Diane out to Mt. Rainier,” Some time in the last minute Nic’s eyes have unfocussed. He blinks, and finds one of the interns staring at him from across the room. Because he’s banging his knee against the underside of his desk, loud enough to rattle the keyboard. Yeah, that would do it. “You said you wanted to know when I started working on _Tanis_ again, right?”

“This is a Tanis thing?” Geoff sounds — no, Nic still can’t tell. 

“I was hoping you could help me get ready for season two. Ask me some questions, if you have any? Go over some of what happened in season one?” There’s a notification on his computer desktop. New message. 

_U okay?_

Nic looks back at the intern, who’s doing this concerned eyebrow thing at him, then turns back to his screen and logs himself out of iChat.

“Isn’t that Alex’s job?” Geoff’s saying.

“I wanted a different perspective, I guess?” Alex isn’t really speaking to him, beyond the sound file she'd emailed to him around 6 a.m., but Nic’s got the feeling that information’s going to create more questions than it answers. “It doesn’t have to be the woods. We could get a drink or a coffee or something instead.”

“Nah, man, I like it. It’s _atmosphere_ or some shit, right?”

“Yeah, exactly,” Nic says in a rush. This is going so much better than he’d expected. “I haven’t really gone hiking since, uh — the whole thing, so—”

“Gotta get back in the saddle.”

“Right.” He feels a little lightheaded. Not like dissociation so much as a rush of blood to the head. “So you want to come?”

“Sure. If we see your freaky monster cabin I’m going home, though.”

“Yeah, you probably won’t. Apparently it’s disappeared.”

“What?”

“Uh, yeah, I talked to Ellis this morning. Spoilers I guess. Sorry.”

“Fucker,” Geoff says, and Nic’s heart should not tumble over itself in his chest the way it does. 

…

The debate Nic’s been having with himself on the drive up to Everett turns out to be moot. Geoff’s over to the Volvo and sliding into the passenger seat before Nic can get the driver’s side door open. No need to worry about whether to give him a hug at all. 

“Hey,” Geoff’s barely clipped his seatbelt in place before he’s craned himself around to reach into the back seat and scratch Diane’s ears. “Hi girl. How you doing? Miss me?”

Nic puts the car in drive and tells himself it’s stupid to feel jealous of his own dog. Geoff’s here. That’s something.

He'd been expecting things to be awkward, but it's not bad. There aren’t a lot of Tanis developments at this stage — and Nic’s starting to really regret telling Paul and Terry a month and a half was going to be enough time to get season two up and running, unless MK emails him back approximately tomorrow — but practicing on Amalia’s got him pretty good at filling time by talking about severed feet, peppered with updates on Cameron Ellis’ latest smug bullshit, to paraphrase Geoff.

It’s enough to get them off the I-5, back into the woods Nic hadn’t really thought he was avoiding until now. There’s still snow at the sides of the roads and threaded into the trees as they head higher into the mountains, flashes of white against deep green. 

Strange to think he’s missed an entire winter up here, of how many months have passed since they’d led him out of that cabin somewhere he can’t quite remember the way to, blood under his nails and knees shaking. It seems closer now, even with Tanis hundreds of miles and a whole half of the compass away. Like if he strained hard enough the blur might wrap him up again, humming through him like an electric light or a hundred flies on a corpse.

“Buddy?” Geoff’s hand on his elbow, just for a second. “Think you should let me drive the rest of the way.”

The heat’s on low, but Nic can feel sweat beading under the neck of his flannel shirt, and the trees outside the windshield aren’t sweeping by at the pace they were before. He spares a glance at the odometer and can’t remember when he’d let the needle drop below 20 miles per hour. “Oh — good idea.”

Geoff claps him on the arm as they pass each other on the way to the opposite sides of the car. Quick, firm, not even a bit lingering. “You good?”

Better if he’d kept his hand there longer. “Yeah. I’m good.”

“You’re still doing that, huh?” 

Nic blinks, and lifts his head from the window. Away from the coolness of the glass, the car’s still running too warm, but when he checks the dial the heat’s been turned off. “Doing?”

“The floating shit?” Geoff’s watching him sideways, eyes mostly on the road. There’s more snow than Nic remembers, and the clock on the dash is 30 minutes further ahead than it was when he’d sat down. “You still okay to keep going?” 

“It’s not happening that often,” he reaches into the back seat, finds Diane’s flank and digs his fingers into her fur. The touch rolls the fog in his head back some. “I’m doing pretty good now. I don’t think it’ll happen again. ”

“Your definition of good, man…” Geoff shakes his head and laughs. “How about you ease up on getting drugged and kidnapped for season two?”

“I wasn’t technically—”

“Sure.” The turnoff to the trailhead appears about half a mile down the road. Nic hadn’t realized they were so close. “If you ever need backup, you know you can call.”

“Call who?”

“Me, dude,” Geoff hits the turn signal, takes them down a narrower side road, deeper into the trees. “I’ll come back you up.”

“Oh.”

“Hey, I was great at protecting you from that threeway, wasn’t I?”

“Yeah, I just — I wasn’t sure.” The haze is clearing, but slowly. Nic rubs at his eyes, shakes his head. “I think I owe Amalia five bucks that you’re even talking to me right now.”

The car comes to a stop, gravel crunching under tires as Geoff pulls to the side of the road. It takes Nic a second to notice the signboard, the few other cars parked on the shoulder. Trail head. 

“Who’s Amalia?” 

The air outside is crisp and cool, all pine and wet ground. Nic takes a deep breath and holds it, tries to focus on the breeze on his face, blowing through his hair. Nothing sweet, nothing rotting. No Tanis up here. Probably. 

“She was working with Alex on _Black Tapes_ for a while. She’s been staying with me for a couple weeks.” Diane’s pawing at the back window, nearly wriggles out the door before Nic can get it all the way open. “Hold on, girl. Sit. No, hey, not without your leash. Sit. Good girl.” 

Geoff’s standing somewhere behind him, but Nic would swear he can feel the weight and shape of him, even from several feet away. “Right. Yeah, I remember. The one you used to date, right?”

This time, realization is sharp and sudden, like a stab. He’s fucked up. “Yeah, but it’s not—”

“Forget it.” Geoff shoulders his backpack and starts across the road, boots kicking up a few half-disintegrated leaves as he goes. “You wanted to do questions, right?”

“Hey,” Nic says.

“C’mon, man. Tanis. Questions. S’what we’re here for, right?” Geoff’s voice is too loud, smile too bright. Damn it. “Turn your thing on, dude. Hit me.”

“I don’t think—”

“Let’s do it man. Season two. Hit me.”

…

_“So, you got any questions? Concerns?”_

_“…do you have anything that’s not Meerkatnip at my apartment related?”_

_“…do — do you have any questions that aren’t Veronica and me in a tent related?”_

…

“I mean, if you’re not comfortable with this level of questioning,” Geoff’s all wide eyed and a shit-eating grin and Nic’s taken at least three levels in regret since they left the car, with regret-based experience points to spare. 

“It’s — um,” there’s a joke here, somewhere. _You sound like my Reddit AMA_ , that would be it. Nic can hear himself saying the words in his head. Can hear himself laughing. It sounds pretty good. Convincing, almost. “I feel like you’re asking me something else right now.”

“I’m not.” Geoff says. “Unless, shit, you and Morgan Miller? That hotel room—”

“Okay, you know, you’re right. I don’t think I’m comfortable with —” The recorder chirps and goes dim when he presses the pause button and Nic shoves it back in his pocket. “I think we need to talk.” 

“Think you’ve been pretty clear, man,” and Geoff’s still smiling but his voice is hard. 

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Not like you’ve been hiding your feelings.” 

“I don’t—”

“Yeah, yeah believe me, I got that.” 

Diane pulls on her leash and whines. Upset they’re not moving fast enough? Or maybe she can feel the tension. Nic’s not sure how anyone could miss it. God, he’s fucked up so bad. So, so bad. 

“If this is about Amalia, you’ve really got the wrong—“

“Jesus, it’s not that.” Geoff says. “I mean, fuck, I’m not even mad at you. You were pretty fucking clear we weren’t on the same page from the beginning.” 

“We aren’t?” That might be true, actually, because Nic feels three steps behind in this argument. But it hurts, all the same. 

“It’s — it’s fucking fine, okay? We’re still friends, I’m gonna come protect you from orgies or whatever,”Geoff says. Probably to Nic, though he’s not looking at him any more. “I just… I can’t do this any more, okay? I can do Tanis, and I can do cults, and I can do beers but all the other shit — it’s not working for me. I can’t keep wanting what I’m not gonna get.” 

“What,” that he can get words out comes as a surprise, “what did you want?” 

Geoff’s foot crunches on a fallen branch on the trail, and Nic realizes with a start they’re still walking. He hadn’t registered the movement until now. “Doesn’t matter.”

“Come on.”

“Forget it.”

“Come on,” Nic says again, and he can almost hear himself over the roar of his own heartbeat. 

“I wanted to be your fucking boyfriend, okay?” Geoff spits it out, and Nic feels something twist in his chest. “Not the guy you hook up with when your weird shit meter gets too full for you to handle.”

He feels dizzy, like he had in the car. Sweaty, too. They haven’t been hiking long enough for that. “You should have said.”

“When? The first time you started avoiding me or the second? And don’t do that ‘I wasn’t avoiding you’ thing, okay, man? I know I’m not as smart as you but I’m not stupid.”

“I don’t think you’re stupid,” Nic says, automatic. “I, okay, I was avoiding you, but it wasn’t — it was about me, not you.”

“Dude, don’t.” Geoff shoves his hands deep into his pockets and kicks a stray rock down the trail. “I just wanna hike a fucking mountain with my fucking friend, okay? It's fine. Ask me some more questions or — whatever." 

Nic hasn’t heard a less convincing _it’s fine_ in at least a couple days. “No, listen.”

“Nic—”

“ _Listen_ ,” ahead of him, Diane’s ears perk. Nic thinks he might be embarrassed to snap like that under other circumstance. “Look, after everything that happened last fall, being around you was the only time still I felt like myself. And then all of a sudden it wasn’t, and I didn’t know how to — to deal with it, I guess.”

Geoff doesn’t say anything, which is either a victory or not. 

“Every time you were around it was like my brain started buzzing, and everything else got crowded out. It was all I could think about and I... I think it just took me a while to get used to it, to be honest.”

“Nic,” Geoff says, “what the fuck are you talking about?”

“Being in love with you.” It feels better in his mouth than he’d expected. Like something certain. That’s depressingly strange.

He goes another three or four steps before he notices Geoff’s stopped moving. Is staring at him. 

“Are you okay?”

Geoff lets out a long, long breath. “You’re serious right now?”

“Yeah.” 

“Wow,” Geoff says.

“Yeah, wow.” Nic hears himself laugh, a little unsteady. It’s all on the table now. He can’t still be fucking this up. He can’t. “Sorry. I think — I think maybe I should have started with that. A while ago."

“For fuck’s sake,” Geoff shakes his head, helpless. “Come here, man.” 

He’d be happy to oblige, but he only gets one step before Geoff’s crashing into his personal space, hands on his face and mouth against his. Nic gets a grip on the his jacket, hand slipped between his back and the rucksack, and it’s the only thing that keeps him from going over into a tree.

The kiss doesn’t feel like it goes on long enough, but when they pull apart Nic’s shaky from lack of air and the hands Geoff runs through hair isn’t steady either. 

“You’re gonna kill me, man,” Geoff says and pushes his face into Nic’s shoulder with a breathless, uneven laugh. “Don’t leave that shit to the last minute.”

“I’m sorry.” He runs his hand over Geoff’s jacket, smoothing down the material at the small of his back. The movement seems to take less effort than it would have a few minutes ago, like there’s a lightness to it. Almost floating, except Nic’s pretty sure he’s here, in himself, as much as he’s been in — just, as much as he’s been. "Hey, _are_ you okay?"

Geoff’s breathing hard enough that Nic can hear it when he tries to steady himself to speak. “Fuck, forget it. Just say it again.”

Nic gets as far as opening his mouth before he’s being pulled in for another kiss. 

They go over the rest of the questions in the car, on the way back to Everett. The sound profile’s not ideal, but Nic’s pretty sure he can smooth the whole thing together in post. 

_…_

March 14, 2016

 **FROM: Meerkatnip  
** TO: Nic Silver - PNWS  
SUBJECT: Re:Job offer?

_what kind of budget increase are we talking about?_

_mk_

 

 

 

 

 


End file.
